Insurance broker AI assistant for personal and commercial lines

It's the last week of March. Your account handlers are working through a pile of 1 April commercial renewals, the motor book is busy because new registration plates went on sale on the 1st, and the phone keeps ringing with people who want "a quick quote". Meanwhile a client's café has had a leak overnight, and she has left a voicemail you won't hear until eleven. An insurance broker AI assistant answers all of those calls, and the WhatsApp messages and website chats that arrive at the same time. It takes the details a handler needs for a quote, books renewal reviews, records claims notifications and flags them to your staff. It never tells anyone what cover they need or whether a loss is covered. That stays with your qualified people.

This page is for small and mid-sized brokerages: a high-street personal lines broker, a commercial broker with a handful of account executives, a specialist scheme broker for landlords, tradespeople or taxis. It explains which calls Klugon's assistant can take, where the FCA boundary sits, what to do with claims, how to set it up alongside your broking system, and what it costs.

The calls an insurance brokerage gets

Broking phones carry a narrower mix of calls than most businesses. The same few types come round again and again, with a small number of calls that matter far more than the rest.

New business quote requests

Most new callers want a price. A van driver whose policy runs out on Friday. A new landlord with a buy-to-let. A builder who has just won a contract that requires £5 million public liability. A restaurant owner whose current insurer has declined to renew. They usually phone several brokers, and the one who calls back first with a sensible question often wins the business.

A handler can't quote from a phone call alone. They need the risk details: what's being insured, where, the claims history, the sums insured, the trade, the turnover, the drivers. Collecting that takes time, and much of it is the same question set every time. That's the part an assistant can take.

Renewal calls

Renewals are the steady heartbeat of a brokerage. Clients ring because the renewal invitation arrived and the premium has gone up. They ring to ask whether you've "shopped it around". They ring because they've changed their van, moved premises or taken on staff, and want to know whether that matters before they renew. Some ring to cancel, and some ring to ask why they've been auto-renewed.

Most of these calls end with "can someone call me back", and that's what the assistant should arrange: a review appointment with the account handler, with the reason for the call written down.

Mid-term adjustments

Change of vehicle, change of address, a new named driver, a new site, an increase in stock over Christmas. These are routine for your team but they're not routine for the client, who often doesn't know whether the change needs reporting. The assistant can take the details and flag them for processing. It shouldn't confirm that cover is in place for the change, because it isn't until your team or the insurer says so.

Claims notifications

Claims calls are the ones clients remember. A burst pipe in a rental flat. A break-in at a shop. A van written off on the motorway. A customer who has slipped in a salon and is threatening to sue. The caller is stressed, sometimes still at the scene, and wants a person. Your instructions for these calls matter more than anything else on this page, and they get their own section below.

Documents and admin

"Can you send me my certificate?" "I need a copy of my schedule for the landlord." "What's my policy number?" "When does my cover end?" Many of these the assistant can't answer, because it doesn't have access to your broking system. It can take the request, check who is calling at a basic level and flag it for the team. It can answer general ones from your own published information, such as how to get documents, office hours, and how to pay.

When the phone rings

Brokerage phones follow the working day. Mornings are busy, especially Monday mornings after a weekend of incidents and Monday renewal reminders. Lunchtime brings personal lines callers who ring from work. Late afternoon brings the "my cover ends tomorrow" calls.

The calls you lose are the ones that come when the team is already on the phone, at lunch, after half past five and on Saturdays. Personal lines clients compare quotes in the evening, after the children are in bed. Small business owners think about insurance when the shop has shut. Claims happen at night and at weekends, and the first contact often comes straight after the incident.

Renewal season and other peaks

Insurance has its own calendar, and a brokerage's busiest weeks are predictable:

• 1 January and 1 April commercial renewals. Many commercial policies are written to the start of the calendar year or the start of the financial year, which piles renewal work into December and March.
• March and September motor. New registration plates go on sale in March and September, and new vehicles mean new motor policies and fleet adjustments.
• Summer for events and travel. Event liability, wedding insurance and travel enquiries rise in spring and summer.
• Winter for claims. Storms, floods and freezing pipes push claims volume up from autumn through to early spring.
• Year-end for trades. Contractors often review liability cover when they start new contracts in the new year.

Your own book will have its own pattern. The point is that the peaks overlap. The week your team is flat out on 1 April renewals is the same week new motor enquiries arrive, and something has to give.

What an insurance broker AI assistant handles

The useful way to think about it: everything the assistant does is information-gathering or diary work. It doesn't advise, quote, bind, cancel or settle anything.

Collecting risk details for a quote

Give the assistant a short question set for each product line you write. It asks those questions in conversation, on the phone, on WhatsApp or in website chat, and saves the answers as a lead in your Klugon dashboard. A handler then reviews the lead and decides whether and how to quote.

A sample question set for a tradesperson's public liability enquiry:

1. Business name and trading style (sole trader, partnership, limited company)
2. The trade and the main types of work
3. Approximate annual turnover and wage roll
4. Number of employees, including labour-only subcontractors
5. Any claims or incidents in the last five years
6. The limit of indemnity they've been asked for, if any
7. Renewal date of any current policy
8. Best phone number, email and time to call

For a commercial combined enquiry, you'd add premises address, construction type, stock and contents values, and security. For a landlord, the number of properties and tenant types. Keep each set short. Clients give up on interrogations, and your handler will need to call anyway.

Tell the assistant to collect, not to judge. If a client says "I don't know what limit I need," the assistant writes that down and says the handler will talk it through. It must not suggest a figure, even the one the client's contract probably requires.

Booking renewal reviews and new business calls

Klugon has a built-in calendar that uses your opening hours, your appointment types and their lengths, and the staff who take each type. A broker might set up:

• New business call, 20 minutes with any handler
• Commercial renewal review, 45 minutes with the named account executive
• Personal lines renewal call, 15 minutes with the personal lines team
• Claims follow-up call, 20 minutes with the claims handler

The assistant offers free slots, books one, and gives the caller a reference in the same conversation. If you use Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, the assistant can also check busy times there and add events, once you've connected it on the Business tier or above. That connection is set up per calendar and isn't automatic two-way sync, so most brokers keep the built-in calendar as the source of truth for AI bookings and check it alongside their own diaries. If your handlers already share Calendly links, the assistant can send a single-use Calendly link in chat or WhatsApp instead.

In chat and messaging, the assistant can move or cancel a booking. On a phone call it can cancel, but not reschedule. A caller who wants to move a review is offered a cancellation and a new booking, or a callback.

Answering the questions that come up every day

The assistant answers from the knowledge you give it: your website, uploaded documents, and text you paste in. Good material for a brokerage:

• Which lines of business you write and which you don't (be honest: "we don't arrange travel insurance" saves everyone time)
• Office hours, address, parking
• How to get policy documents and certificates
• How to pay, including whether you offer premium finance (as a fact about your service, not a recommendation)
• Your complaints procedure, including how to complain and the Financial Ombudsman Service
• Your firm's full name, FCA firm reference number and status
• What happens at renewal and how to tell you about changes

Capturing claims notifications

The assistant takes the facts of a claim in a structured way and flags it to your team. It doesn't decide anything about the claim. More on this below, because it's the call type with the most risk.

Taking messages for handlers

When a client wants a specific person, the assistant takes a message with the client's name, policy type, reason for calling and best callback time, and flags it. Your handler sees it in the Klugon inbox and in Slack, if you've connected Slack.

Where the FCA line sits for an AI assistant

Insurance distribution is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and your firm's permissions and its rules apply to everything your front door says. An AI assistant doesn't change who is responsible. You are.

Advice, information and demands and needs

Under the FCA's Insurance: Conduct of Business sourcebook (ICOBS), a firm must identify the customer's demands and needs before a contract is concluded, and every sale must be accompanied by a demands and needs test based on information from the customer. ICOBS 5.2 applies whether or not advice is given. Where you do give a personal recommendation, further rules apply.

That has two practical consequences for an AI assistant.

First, the assistant can help collect the information that feeds your demands and needs process. It can ask about the business, the risk and the client's circumstances, and record the answers.

Second, the assistant must never make the assessment. It must not say which policy suits the client, whether a level of cover is enough, whether an excess is sensible, or which insurer is better. Any of those could amount to a personal recommendation that your firm, not a chatbot, must stand behind. Put that into the assistant's instructions in plain words, and test it.

Instructions that keep the assistant on the right side

A starting point you can adapt:

Add your firm's specifics. A broker who works on an information-only basis for some products might add: "For [product], we don't give advice. Don't describe this as advised." A commercial broker might add: "Never confirm that a certificate has been issued."

The Consumer Duty and your front door

The FCA's Consumer Duty has applied to open products since 31 July 2023 and to closed products since 31 July 2024. One of its four outcomes is consumer support: customers should be able to get help, make changes, claim and complain without unreasonable barriers. Two points follow for an AI assistant.

• It can help with the support outcome. A client who rings at 7pm about a claim, or at lunchtime about a renewal, gets answered and gets a clear next step instead of voicemail.
• It can't become a barrier. A client who wants a person must always be able to reach one. Make sure the assistant offers a callback or a message every time, never loops, and always gives your office number and hours. The assistant can't put a call through to someone, so "speak to a person" means a flagged callback request, and your team needs to work those flags promptly.

Complaints

Under the FCA's complaints rules, a complaint is any expression of dissatisfaction, oral or written, whether justified or not. Callers rarely say "I'd like to make a formal complaint." They say "I'm not happy that this went up by four hundred pounds without anyone telling me." Tell the assistant to treat any dissatisfaction as a possible complaint: acknowledge it, take the details, give your complaints procedure from its knowledge, and flag the conversation. Your complaints handler then logs and handles it in the usual way, with the Financial Ombudsman Service as the route if the client is still unhappy.

Vulnerable customers

The FCA's guidance on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers (FG21/1) expects firms to recognise and respond to vulnerability. Someone who has just had a bereavement and is calling about a deceased parent's home insurance, or a client whose business has flooded and who is clearly distressed, needs a person. Tell the assistant to hand these conversations to your team, to be patient, and not to push through a question set.

Pricing at renewal

Since 1 January 2022, under the rules in the FCA's general insurance pricing practices policy statement (PS21/5), firms must not offer home and motor renewal prices higher than the equivalent new business price through the same channel. The assistant doesn't set or discuss prices, so its job here is simple: when a client is unhappy with a renewal price, don't explain it, don't defend it, and book a review.

Telling callers who you are

Callers sometimes ask whether you're regulated. The assistant can give your firm's full name and FCA firm reference number, and suggest they check it on the Financial Services Register. Encourage that habit: it's one of the simplest protections against impersonation fraud.

Claims notifications: how the assistant handles them

A claims call needs a person. The assistant can't put the caller through, so its job is to collect the facts quickly, tell the client exactly what to do next, and flag the conversation so a handler calls back.

What to collect

Keep it short. Someone with water coming through a ceiling won't answer fifteen questions. A good minimum:

• Name, and the business or property the policy covers
• Type of policy (home, landlord, commercial, motor, liability)
• What happened, in the caller's words
• When it happened
• Whether anyone is hurt or in danger
• Whether the police or emergency services are involved (and a crime reference, if the caller has one)
• Best number to call back

What to tell the caller

The assistant should, in this order:

1. If anyone is in danger, tell them to call 999 first.
2. Tell them the claim has been recorded and passed to the claims team, and when someone will call (your real answer, such as "within office hours today" or "first thing on Monday").
3. Give the insurer's 24-hour claims or emergency helpline, if you've supplied it for that type of policy. Most insurers run one, and for an escape of water or a motor accident it's often the fastest route to help.
4. Tell them to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage and to keep receipts, if your policies say so and you've put that wording in its knowledge.
5. Never say whether the loss is covered, what the excess will be, or whether the claim will be paid.

The notification question

Check your terms of business and your insurers' policy conditions on one point: does a client telling you, the broker, count as notifying the insurer? For many policies it doesn't, and some policies have strict time limits for notification. Your assistant's wording must not create the impression that the claim has been reported to the insurer when it hasn't. "I've passed this to our claims team, who will help you notify your insurer" is safer than "Your claim has been registered."

How the flag reaches your team

When the assistant hands a conversation over, it marks it "escalated" in the Klugon inbox, where it shows a "Needs a person" banner, and posts to Slack or Zapier if you've connected one. Klugon doesn't send email or text alerts to staff, so connect Slack, or use Zapier to route the event into the tool your claims team watches. Out of hours, someone needs to own those flags, or the client should be told plainly that the office will pick it up when it opens.

The AI isn't paused when it flags a conversation. If a client keeps messaging on WhatsApp, the assistant keeps replying, so keep its handover wording consistent: the claim is with the team, here is the insurer's helpline, a person will call.

What the assistant should never take

Some calls should go straight to a person, with no attempt by the assistant to answer:

• Questions about whether something is covered. "Am I covered if my tenant's dog damages the carpet?" "Does my van policy cover tools left overnight?" These are advice.
• Requests to bind or change cover today. "I need cover from midday for a van I'm collecting." Take the details and flag it urgently. Tell the client cover isn't in place until your team confirms it.
• Cancellations. Record the request and flag it. Cancellation can have consequences, such as fees, outstanding finance or a gap in cover, that a handler should explain.
• Payment details. The assistant shouldn't take card numbers or bank details on a call or in chat. Tell it to direct payment questions to your published methods or your team.
• Changes to bank or payee details. Fraudsters target brokers and premium finance arrangements. Your assistant should never confirm or change payment details and should tell anyone asking to call the office on the number on your website.
• Disclosure questions. "Do I need to tell them about my speeding fine?" or "Does a spent conviction count?" Point to a handler.
• Liability allegations from third parties. A person claiming against your client should get your firm's details for their solicitor and nothing else.
• Anything about a specific claim's progress. The assistant can't see your claims system and shouldn't guess.

Sample conversations

These are sample conversations. The brokers and callers are made up, and the wording is written to show the pattern, not taken from real calls.

Sample phone call: a commercial renewal and a late quote request

A sample call to Hollin Bridge Insurance Brokers, a fictional commercial broker. It's 6:40pm on a Thursday in late March.

Note what the assistant didn't do. It didn't say "site work is usually covered", didn't comment on the price rise, and didn't speculate. It booked the right person, recorded the change and flagged the cover question.

Sample WhatsApp: an escape of water claim at the weekend

A sample WhatsApp conversation with Hollin Bridge's assistant. It's 8:05am on a Sunday.

Behind the scenes, the conversation is flagged as needing a person, and a post appears in the claims team's Slack channel. On Monday the claims handler opens the inbox, reads the WhatsApp thread and calls Ms Okonjo.

Sample website chat: a van insurance enquiry at night

A sample website chat with Hollin Bridge's assistant. It's 10:20pm.

The handler arrives in the morning to a lead with most of the rating details already collected, and a booked call.

Setting up an insurance broker AI assistant

Most of the work is writing down what your handlers already know. Plan on an afternoon for the first version and a week of review after it goes live.

A setup checklist for brokers

1. List the lines you write and the ones you don't. Include schemes and specialist products. Add a short, honest line for each declined area.
2. Write a question set for each main product. Keep each one to six to ten questions.
3. Write the advice boundary into the assistant's instructions. Use the wording above as a start. Have your compliance officer read it.
4. Write the claims procedure. What to collect, what to say, the insurers' helpline numbers by product, what your team will do and when.
5. Add your regulatory facts. Full legal name, trading names, FCA firm reference number, complaints procedure and Financial Ombudsman details.
6. Upload your terms of business and FAQs. Upload as PDF, DOCX or text. Remove anything that reads like advice or a promotion of a specific product, unless compliance has approved it.
7. Set up appointment types and staff. New business calls, renewal reviews, claims follow-ups, each with a length and the staff who take it.
8. Write a greeting that says it's an AI. Klugon's default greeting doesn't, so set your own. For a regulated firm, telling callers up front is the honest choice.
9. Connect Slack or Zapier for handovers. Decide who watches the channel in and out of hours.
10. Test it with awkward questions. Ask it whether you're covered, what limit you need, whether to accept a renewal. Read its answers. Fix the instructions until every answer is a polite handover.
11. Run it on the website chat first. Then add WhatsApp, then phone, once you trust the answers.

Keeping your office number

You don't need to change the number on your schedules and letterheads. Klugon gives you a dedicated number, and you forward your existing line to it using your provider's call forwarding. You can forward all calls, or only the ones you don't answer or that come in when you're busy. Many brokers start with forwarding on no-answer, so the team still takes calls it can, and the assistant picks up overflow and evenings. Firms on the voice Business tier can connect their own SIP trunk instead. Numbers can't be ported to Klugon. Note that phone numbers can only be added after the free trial ends, so you test voice in the browser during the trial.

Working alongside your broking system

Klugon doesn't connect to Acturis, Open GI, SSP or Applied Epic, and it can't look up a client's policy. Treat it as the front door. Leads, bookings and conversations are in your Klugon dashboard, where you can export them as CSV. On the Business tier and above, the assistant can also send leads to HubSpot, Zoho or Pipedrive, and to Salesforce on the Scale tier, when it's set up to do so.

Languages

The assistant can answer calls in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Arabic. That helps brokers whose clients include, for example, Portuguese-speaking cleaning companies or Arabic-speaking taxi drivers.

What it costs

Klugon prices in US dollars. It's three separate products and you pay only for the ones you use.

Paying yearly takes 20% off. A phone number is $9 a month, a connected WhatsApp number is $19 a month, and extra voice minutes are $15 for each 100 started. Calendar and CRM connections need the Business tier. Every product starts with a 7-day trial; a card is required and is charged when the trial ends unless you cancel. Full details are on the pricing page.

A worked example for a five-handler brokerage

Assumptions, which you should replace with your own:

• The office misses 15 calls a week: overflow when everyone's on the phone, lunchtimes and after 5:30.
• A third of those are new business enquiries. The rest are existing clients, who mostly ring back.
• One in five of those new business callers would have placed a policy with you if they'd got through.
• The average new commercial client brings £400 a year in commission and fees, and stays for several years.

That's 5 missed new business calls a week, so 1 lost client a week, or about 4 a month. At £400 a year each, a month of lost clients is £1,600 a year of income, before you count renewals in later years.

Say each call lasts four minutes and the assistant takes 60 calls a month, including evenings and claims. That's 240 minutes, well within the Starter allowance. Starter voice plus a forwarded number is $108 a month. Add the website chatbot on Starter for $49 if you want evening quote enquiries caught online too. If the assistant saves one new client a month, it has paid for itself several times over. If it saves none, you'll see that in the leads report within a few weeks and can cancel.

Against hiring cover

A part-time receptionist working 20 hours a week at the UK National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour, the rate from 1 April 2026 for workers aged 21 and over, costs about £1,100 a month before employer's National Insurance, pension and holiday pay. A receptionist does more: they recognise regular clients, take payments over the phone, chase documents, and can walk into a handler's office with an urgent claim. But they work office hours, and broking's lost calls happen in the evenings, at weekends and in peak weeks. Many brokers will find the AI is cover for the hours nobody works, not a replacement for a person. The AI receptionist vs human receptionist comparison looks at that trade-off in detail.

Against a telephone answering service

A traditional answering service is a person reading a script who takes a message. That has one real strength in insurance: a human can calm a distressed claims caller and use judgement. Its weakness is that it usually can't book into your diary, answer questions about the lines you write or collect a full risk question set. The Moneypenny alternative comparison sets a well-known UK answering service against an AI assistant, including the cases where the human service is the better choice.

Data protection for brokers

Brokers handle personal data in quantity, and some of it is sensitive. Medical information for protection and travel products is special category data. Motoring convictions and unspent criminal convictions disclosed for underwriting are criminal offence data, which has its own conditions under UK GDPR. The ICO's UK GDPR guidance covers both.

The simplest safeguard is to collect less at first contact. Your question sets should gather what a handler needs to start a conversation, not everything they'll need to place a risk. Medical details, conviction details beyond "yes, one speeding fine", dates of birth for every driver and bank details can all wait until a handler is dealing with the client through your own secure process.

Klugon is operated by a German company under the GDPR. Its sub-processors, including the AI provider and telephony provider, are in the USA under standard contractual clauses, as its privacy policy lists. Calls aren't recorded. Every call appears in your inbox, but transcripts may contain only the assistant's side of the conversation, so don't rely on them as a record of what a client disclosed. If your firm has call-recording obligations of its own, the assistant doesn't meet them, so keep those processes where they are. You can export conversations, leads and bookings as CSV, delete individual records, and request full erasure by email. Add the assistant to your record of processing and your privacy notice before it goes live.

How it compares with what brokers already use

Brokers already have a broking system, often a quote-and-buy page for personal lines, an online portal for documents, and an email inbox. Here's where an AI assistant fits next to each.

• Broking system (Acturis, Open GI, SSP and others). That's where policies, clients and documents live. Klugon doesn't replace it or connect to it. It catches enquiries and bookings before they reach it.
• Quote-and-buy pages. Good for simple personal lines products with straightforward risks. They don't help the many commercial and specialist clients who want to talk to someone, or the ones who don't fit the rating form. The assistant can catch those and book a call.
• Client portal. Clients who use it get their documents without phoning. Clients who don't still ring. The assistant can tell them how to use the portal and take a request if they can't.
• Shared email inbox. Fine for documents and admin, but it's slow for a new business caller who's ringing three brokers. The assistant answers immediately.

If you're weighing the wider question of how much a missed call costs, the guide on missed calls and lost revenue works through the arithmetic in more detail.

Measuring whether it's working

Give it a month, then look at:

• New business leads captured outside office hours. The leads list shows when each one came in.
• Leads that turned into placed business. Mark them as converted in the leads page.
• Renewal reviews booked by the assistant. And how many of those renewed with you.
• Claims flags and how fast your team responded. The insights page lists handovers waiting for a person.
• Questions without a good answer. The insights page lists questions the assistant struggled with. Each one is a gap in its knowledge or a sign that your boundary wording needs work.

The analytics page shows calls, minutes, bookings, leads and the busiest hours by day. Busiest hours are worth looking at: they often show that more enquiries arrive after 6pm than anyone in the office had realised.

Frequently asked questions

Can an insurance broker AI assistant give advice on cover?

No, and it shouldn't. You configure it to collect information and book calls, and to tell any caller who asks about cover, limits or whether something is covered that only a qualified member of your team can answer. Test it before it goes live, and have your compliance officer review its instructions.

What happens when a client rings to report a claim?

The assistant takes the key facts, tells the caller to call 999 if anyone is in danger, gives your insurer's emergency claims line if you've supplied it, and flags the conversation for your claims team in the Klugon inbox and in Slack or Zapier. It never says whether the loss is covered.

Can it transfer a claims caller to a handler?

No. Klugon can't transfer a live call. It flags the conversation for your team, who call the client back. That's why your claims procedure, your insurers' helpline numbers and your out-of-hours ownership of flags matter so much.

Can it quote or bind cover?

No. It doesn't connect to insurers or your broking system and it never confirms that cover is in place. It collects rating details so your handler can quote faster.

Does it work with Acturis or Open GI?

No. Klugon doesn't connect to broking systems. Leads, bookings and conversations are in your Klugon dashboard and can be exported as CSV, or sent to HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive or Salesforce on the right tier.

Does it record calls?

No. Klugon doesn't record calls. Every call appears in your inbox, but the transcript may only include the assistant's side. If you need recordings, keep your existing arrangements.

Can it send renewal reminders or chase documents?

No. Klugon doesn't make outbound calls or send texts, reminders or follow-up messages. It answers clients who contact you. Your broking system's renewal process stays as it is.

Is Klugon FCA-authorised?

No. Klugon is a software tool and doesn't carry out regulated activities. Your firm remains responsible for everything said on its behalf, which is why the assistant is set up to avoid advice entirely.

Can it take premium payments?

It shouldn't, and you shouldn't promote it for that. Point clients to your existing payment methods, and tell the assistant never to take or confirm card or bank details.

Can we keep our existing phone number?

Yes. You forward your current number to the Klugon number, for all calls or only unanswered ones. Numbers can be added once the trial ends; during the trial you test the assistant in the browser.

Before you decide

Start small. Put the assistant on your website chat for evening enquiries, write a good claims procedure, and read every conversation for the first two weeks. When it's consistently handing cover questions back to your team and collecting clean quote details, forward your phones to it for lunchtimes and evenings. The AI receptionist for professional services page covers how other regulated firms use it, including accountants, financial advisers and estate agents. For the phone side in more depth, see the AI phone receptionist feature page, or go back to Klugon's AI receptionist for an overview.