Glossary
Insurance intake
Insurance intake is the process of collecting the information needed to quote and write a policy: applicant details, operations, exposures, prior coverage, and loss history. It is the front door of new business. Weak intake shows up later as carrier follow-up questions, re-keyed data, and quotes built on wrong assumptions.
What good intake collects
For a commercial account: legal name and FEIN, a real description of operations, locations, payroll or sales figures, vehicle and driver lists, prior carrier and premium, and loss history. For personal lines: drivers, vehicles or property details, and current coverage. The same data feeds the ACORD applications and every carrier portal that comes after it, so gaps at intake multiply downstream.
Why it becomes a bottleneck
The information rarely arrives in one clean package. It comes in as a phone call, an email thread, a dec page PDF, and an expiring policy. Someone re-keys it into the AMS, then again into a rater or a carrier portal. Every re-key is a chance to mistype a VIN or drop a prior claim, and every gap becomes another email to the client.
The fastest intake starts from documents the client already has. A current dec page and loss runs carry most of what a quote needs before anyone fills out a form.
In Relay
Relay's Document Parsing reads dec pages, loss runs, and other intake documents into structured data. Intake Forms are coming soon. See how →
Common questions
What is the difference between intake and a submission?
Intake gathers the raw information from the client. The submission packages it, with applications and loss runs, and sends it to carriers or wholesalers for quoting.
What documents speed up intake the most?
The current dec pages and loss runs. Together they carry coverage, limits, prior carrier, premium, and claim history, which is most of what a quote needs.
Part of the Relay insurance operations glossary. Updated 2026-07-11. See how we source content.
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