By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · June 2026

Insurance Agent Intake Forms: What to Capture for Quoting and Binding Coverage

An insurance agent who takes a phone call, jots down a name and an address, and then starts quoting is going to miss something. Maybe it is the 16-year-old driver who was not mentioned. Maybe it is the wood-burning stove that makes the homeowners policy a specialty placement. Maybe it is the subcontractor exposure on a commercial account that turns a straightforward BOP into a multi-line program. Whatever it is, you will find out at the worst possible moment — when the underwriter declines the submission, when the claims adjuster finds the coverage gap, or when the client calls after a loss and learns they were never covered for it.

Insurance intake is not a formality. It is the foundation of every quote, every binder, and every policy your agency writes. A proper insurance agent intake form captures everything you need to place coverage accurately, disclose risks honestly, and protect both your client and your E&O exposure. Here is what that form should include — broken down by the type of business you are writing.

Client information: who you are insuring

Before you can quote anything, you need to know exactly who you are quoting for. This sounds obvious, but the details matter more in insurance than in almost any other professional service. A name spelled wrong on an application can delay binding. An incorrect entity type can void coverage. A missing FEIN means the commercial application goes nowhere.

Your intake should capture:

• Full legal name — for individuals, first, middle, and last exactly as it appears on their driver's license or government ID. For businesses, the exact registered entity name including "LLC," "Inc.," "Corp.," or "d/b/a" designations. Carriers are strict about named insured — a policy issued to "Smith Plumbing" when the entity is "Smith Plumbing Services, LLC" creates a coverage gap that only surfaces at claims time.
• Entity type — for commercial accounts: LLC, Corporation, S-Corp, Partnership, Sole Proprietorship, Joint Venture, Nonprofit, or Trust. This determines how the policy is structured, who qualifies as an insured, and what endorsements are needed.
• Date of birth — for individual clients. Required for personal lines rating and for running MVR and CLUE reports.
• FEIN or SSN — FEIN for business entities, SSN for sole proprietors and personal lines. Required on virtually every carrier application.
• Primary contact — name, title, direct phone, and email of the person who will be your day-to-day contact. On commercial accounts, this is often not the owner — it may be an office manager, CFO, or HR director.
• Mailing address — which may differ from the risk address (the property being insured) or the business operations address.
• Current insurance carrier — if the client is switching agents or carriers. Knowing who currently writes the business tells you whether you are competing on price, coverage, or service, and whether the client has been non-renewed (a very different conversation than a voluntary move).
• Current policy expiration date — this controls your quoting timeline. A policy expiring in 10 days requires a different workflow than one expiring in 90 days. It also tells you whether the client is approaching renewal and comparing options, or mid-term and potentially looking to cancel for cause.
• Reason for shopping — price, coverage gaps, service issues, new policy need, agent change, non-renewal by current carrier. This single field tells you how to position the conversation. A client shopping on price needs competitive premium. A client non-renewed by their carrier needs a market that will accept the risk — and you need to know why they were non-renewed before you submit to your carriers.

Financial advisors face a similar client-identification challenge. Their intake captures assets, risk tolerance, and planning goals rather than coverage lines — but the underlying need for precision in names, entity types, and contact information is identical. See our financial planning intake guide for how that parallel plays out.

Lines of business: what are we quoting

Insurance is not a single product. It is a portfolio of coverages, and your intake needs to identify which lines the client needs — both the ones they asked about and the ones they did not think to ask about. This is where an experienced agent adds value. The client calls about auto insurance; your intake reveals they also own a home, have a boat in the driveway, and run a small business out of their garage. That is a multi-line account, not an auto quote.

Personal lines

• Auto — the most common entry point for personal lines clients
• Homeowners — or renters, condo (HO-6), or landlord (dwelling fire / DP-3)
• Umbrella / personal excess liability — increasingly important and often undersold
• Watercraft / boat — requires separate rating information
• Motorcycle, RV, ATV — each with its own application
• Jewelry / fine arts floater — scheduled items that exceed homeowners sub-limits
• Life insurance — term, whole, universal
• Disability insurance — short-term, long-term, own-occupation vs. any-occupation

Commercial lines

• General liability (CGL) — the foundation of every commercial program
• Professional liability / E&O — for any business giving advice or performing professional services
• Commercial property — building, contents, business income, extra expense
• Business Owners Policy (BOP) — packaged GL + property for qualifying small businesses
• Workers' compensation — mandatory in nearly every state once you have employees
• Commercial auto — owned, hired, and non-owned auto
• Cyber liability — first-party breach costs + third-party liability
• Directors & Officers (D&O) — for entities with boards or management teams
• Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) — wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment
• Inland marine — tools, equipment, and property in transit or at job sites
• Builders risk — coverage during construction or renovation projects
• Liquor liability — for restaurants, bars, and any business that serves alcohol

Benefits

• Group health, dental, vision — employer-sponsored plans
• Group life and disability — employer-paid or voluntary
• Voluntary benefits — accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, pet insurance

Your intake form should present these as a checklist. Clients check what they need. But the form should also prompt you — the agent — to ask about lines the client did not check. A commercial client who does not check workers' comp may not realize it is mandatory. A homeowner who does not check umbrella may not know what it covers. The intake captures the starting point; the conversation fills the gaps.

Auto insurance intake: drivers, vehicles, and loss history

Auto is the highest-volume personal line, and the intake requirements are dense. Every driver and every vehicle must be documented, and the rating variables are specific:

Drivers. For each driver in the household: full legal name, date of birth, driver's license number, issuing state, years licensed, and relationship to the named insured. Include a field for excluded drivers — household members who will not be covered (a common strategy when a household member has a terrible driving record and including them would make the premium prohibitive).

Vehicles. For each vehicle: year, make, model, VIN, and current odometer reading. The VIN is non-negotiable — it is how the carrier identifies the exact vehicle, its safety features, and its theft rate. Without the VIN, your quote is an estimate, not a real rate.

Usage and garaging. How is each vehicle used — commute, pleasure, business, or farm? What is the annual mileage? Where is the vehicle garaged overnight? The garaging address determines the rating territory, and it may differ from the mailing address. A vehicle garaged in a high-density urban ZIP code rates differently than one kept at a rural property, even if the policyholder lives at a suburban mailing address.

Coverage selections. Liability limits (state minimum, 100/300/100, 250/500/250, or CSL), uninsured/underinsured motorist limits (which may be required to match liability in some states), collision and comprehensive deductibles ($250, $500, $1,000), rental reimbursement, roadside assistance, and gap coverage for financed vehicles.

Prior claims and violations. Claims in the last five years — date, type, amount paid. Moving violations in the last three to five years — speeding, at-fault accidents, DUI/DWI, reckless driving. The client's self-reported history will be verified against MVR and CLUE, but collecting it at intake gives you an immediate sense of whether this is a standard or non-standard risk.

Current declarations page. If the client has existing coverage, request a copy of their current declarations page. It tells you their current limits, deductibles, and carrier in one document — and it lets you quote an apples-to-apples comparison rather than guessing at their current program.

Homeowners intake: the property risk profile

Homeowners insurance is property-specific, and every physical characteristic of the home affects the rate, the eligibility, and potentially whether a carrier will write it at all:

• Property address — the risk location, which determines territory, catastrophe exposure, and protection class
• Year built — older homes may require inspection, and homes built before certain code years may need code-upgrade endorsements
• Construction type — frame, masonry, brick veneer, log, or superior construction. Frame rates higher than masonry in most territories
• Square footage and number of stories — drives the replacement cost estimate
• Roof type and age — asphalt shingle, tile, slate, metal, flat/tar-and-gravel. Roof age is one of the most common reasons carriers decline or surcharge a homeowners risk. A 20-year-old shingle roof is approaching or past its expected life, and many carriers will not write the policy until it is replaced
• Heating system — oil, gas, electric, wood stove, pellet stove, geothermal. Wood-burning stoves and oil heat are underwriting concerns that require additional information (clearance to combustibles, oil tank location and age)
• Plumbing and electrical updates — year updated. Homes with original knob-and-tube wiring or galvanized plumbing are difficult to place in standard markets
• Protection class — distance to the nearest fire station and fire hydrant. A home more than five miles from a fire station or 1,000 feet from a hydrant may be in Protection Class 9 or 10, which limits carrier options and increases premium significantly
• Central station alarm — a monitored burglar and/or fire alarm typically earns a premium credit
• Swimming pool or trampoline — attractive nuisances that create liability exposure. Some carriers exclude pools without fencing or will not write homes with trampolines at all
• Dog breed — certain breeds (pit bulls, Rottweilers, German Shepherds, Dobermans, and others depending on the carrier) are excluded or surcharged on homeowners policies due to bite liability statistics
• Dwelling replacement cost — not the market value or the purchase price, but what it would cost to rebuild the structure from the ground up at current material and labor costs
• Personal property value — contents coverage, typically 50–75% of dwelling value, but may need to be adjusted for clients with high-value belongings
• Flood zone — is the property in a FEMA-designated flood zone? Standard homeowners policies exclude flood damage. If the property is in Zone A or V, a separate flood policy is required — and if it is in Zone X, flood coverage is still worth discussing
• Prior claims — last five years, verified against CLUE report

Commercial insurance intake: the business risk profile

Commercial accounts are where intake complexity increases dramatically. Every business is different, and the risk profile cannot be captured with a generic form. Your intake needs to build a complete picture of what the business does, how it operates, and where the exposures lie:

• Business description — not just "contractor" or "restaurant," but a detailed narrative of operations. What services do you provide? What products do you sell? Do you install, repair, or manufacture? Do you work on-site at client locations or only at your own premises? Carriers underwrite based on operations, and a vague description leads to a vague quote — or a declination
• Years in business — new ventures are harder to place than established operations. Many carriers require a minimum of three years in business for certain classes
• Annual revenue — current year and prior year. Revenue is a primary rating basis for general liability in many class codes
• Number of employees — full-time, part-time, and 1099 independent contractors. The distinction matters — 1099 workers create subcontractor exposure even if the business does not think of them as subcontractors
• Payroll by class code — for workers' compensation. Each job function has a different class code and rate. A roofing contractor with $500,000 in roofing payroll and $80,000 in clerical payroll needs both class codes properly allocated
• Locations — every physical location where the business operates. Address, operations conducted at each location, whether the space is owned or leased, and square footage
• Vehicles — complete vehicle schedule for commercial auto. Same information as personal auto (year, make, model, VIN, use) plus radius of operations, whether vehicles cross state lines, and whether any are over 10,000 GVW
• Subcontractors — does the business use subcontractors? How many? Do you require certificates of insurance from them? What limits do you require? Uninsured subcontractor exposure is one of the most common audit issues in commercial insurance
• Contractual requirements — do any clients, landlords, or general contractors require the business to carry specific insurance limits or add them as additional insureds? A business that bids on government contracts or works as a sub to a general contractor often has minimum insurance requirements dictated by the contract
• Prior losses — last five years, with detailed narratives. Date, description, amount paid, amount reserved, and whether the claim is open or closed. A single large loss or a pattern of frequency losses changes the entire placement strategy
• Current coverage — all current declarations pages, ideally the full policy if available. This lets you see not just limits and deductibles, but endorsements, exclusions, and audit provisions

Quoting and binding: the operational workflow

The intake form captures the risk. But your internal workflow also needs to document how you are placing it. These fields are for agency use — they do not go to the client, but they belong in the file:

• Markets — which carriers are you submitting to? An experienced agent knows which three or four carriers have appetite for this class of business and will quote competitively. Document your market selection so anyone in the agency can see where the submission went
• Carrier appetite — is this risk within the preferred appetite of your target carriers, or is it borderline? A risk with a recent large loss or a tough class code may need to go to a different tier of carriers
• Binding authority — can you bind this risk under your agency's binding authority, or does it require underwriter approval? Most personal lines and small commercial accounts are within standard binding guidelines. Larger or more complex risks require underwriter sign-off before you can issue a binder
• Surplus lines — if the standard market declines the risk, it moves to surplus lines (non-admitted carriers). This triggers additional disclosure requirements, surplus lines tax, and stamping fees that vary by state. Your intake should flag whether surplus lines are being considered so the appropriate disclosures are prepared
• Payment plan — annual pay, monthly installments via the carrier, EFT/automatic payment, or premium finance company. Premium financing is common on larger commercial accounts and requires a separate premium finance agreement
• Certificates of insurance — does the client need certificates issued at binding? Who are the certificate holders? Are any additional insured endorsements required? Commercial clients often need certificates before they can start a job or sign a lease
• Effective date — when does coverage need to start? This may be driven by the current policy expiration, a contract start date, a lease commencement, or a lender requirement
• Audit provisions — if the policy is auditable (workers' comp and GL are almost always auditable), document the estimated versus actual exposure basis so the client understands that the premium may be adjusted at audit

Why this matters more in insurance than anywhere else

In most service businesses, a missed intake field means an incomplete service or an awkward follow-up call. In insurance, a missed field can mean a coverage gap that does not surface until there is a claim — and by then, it is too late. The client has a loss, the policy does not cover it, and the conversation shifts from "what should I have asked" to "am I exposed to an E&O claim."

A thorough intake form is not just an administrative tool. It is your documentation that you asked the right questions, identified the exposures, and presented the appropriate coverage options. If a client declines umbrella coverage and later has a $2 million judgment, your intake file showing that you offered umbrella and the client declined it in writing is the difference between a defensible position and a professional liability claim against your agency.

Insurance agents who take intake seriously close more business, retain more clients, and sleep better. The five minutes it takes to fill out a proper intake form saves hours of back-and-forth with underwriters, prevents misquotes that erode client trust, and builds a file that protects your agency for the life of the policy.

If you work across financial services, the Professional Services Bundle includes insurance alongside 34 other professional categories, each with industry-specific intake fields.