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Your goal: know which carriers are likely writing a risk, send quote requests toward the right markets (including E&S when admitted markets decline), and never miss a renewal or an appetite change.
New to CoverGuard? Do Getting started first. This guide is your first-week playbook as an insurance broker.
What your workspace looks like
Brokers get a carrier-centric workspace:
- Search / Shop by budget — property lookup and budget-first discovery.
- Property — saved properties and Records.
- Dashboard — your book at a glance (renewals due, quotes awaiting a carrier, active clients), client activity since your last visit, a slim "do next" strip, and a client list ordered by what needs you.
- Agents — CoverGuard Agents (on by default for brokers) for renewal and re-shop flows. Ships paused; activate what you want.
- Toolkit — insurance operations: carrier appointments, renewal calendar, policy issuance tracker, quote-to-bind funnel, commission tracking, deductible calculator, multi-line bundle builder, surplus lines (E&S) lookup, replacement-cost tool, premium-to-value (PTV) ratio analysis, and cross-sell recommendations.
- Sys Admin — AMS sync (AMS360 / Applied Epic), developer/API.
"Do next" adapts to where you are. While you're still getting set up it leads with the one setup step that unlocks the most — running your first property check, then the others in order. Once you're up and running it switches to live alerts on its own. You never have to configure it, and it never leaves you with nothing: when genuinely nothing needs you, it says so and offers a property to check.
Plus the CoverGuard Advisor everywhere.
Your first week
1. Check a risk's active carriers
Search the property. The Active Carriers panel shows who's writing in that market, sorted binding-first, with indicative premiums and a drill-down into coverage parts, bundles, and terms. This is your market-availability read at a glance. Most markets are still modeled: those carriers show as Likely writing (modeled) with a Preview chip, and an empty list there means "not yet confirmed", not "nobody will write it". Confirm with the carrier or a quote before you rely on it. See The CoverGuard Record.
Your Record is set up for placement: under the score you'll see placement difficulty, how many carriers' appetite matches the property, and what stands between you and a bound policy (the main source of friction, plus any conditions the coverage gate found). It leads with whether the property can be insured, with placement and carriers already open. When nothing needs fixing, your next step is Ask our brokerage team for a quote.
In the placement pilot? If CoverGuard has added you to the broker pilot, a Placement card sits under the score, built for starting a submission:
- Carriers, split into admitted, surplus-lines (E&S) and residual markets, showing which are actively quoting and which match the property's appetite.
- Underwriting requirements: each condition with the form or document that satisfies it, its rough cost and lead time, and the restricted carriers it reopens.
- Market structure for a property only the last-resort market will take: which E&S and residual markets apply, and what a FAIR plan leaves out.
Surplus-lines taxes and stamping fees are not in any estimate. Placement difficulty is shown last and marked Preview, because it hasn't yet been checked against real bound policies.
Tell us whether each read matches your experience. Your answers decide whether the pilot continues, and enough "no" answers switch it off for everyone.
2. Route the quote
When you're ready to place, use Request a quote to send a quote request to CoverGuard's brokerage team, which works with licensed insurance partners to take it to the market. Carriers/brokers can report status back via the partner API, and the request moves through a canonical status timeline. See Requesting a quote.
3. Set up renewal monitoring
Record each client's current insurance (carrier, premium, renewal date) under Clients. On a Pro plan the renewal monitor then runs automatically — escalating alerts (60/30/7 days out) appear on your Dashboard as a renewal approaches, so you can re-quote in time. Setting the renewal date is all it takes. See Alerts and Clients & deals.
4. Watch carrier appetite
Save the properties you place, and carrier-exit alerts surface on your dashboard the moment a carrier stops writing on a saved property's market — the earliest signal to re-shop affected policyholders. (No toggle; it runs automatically on Pro.)
5. Activate a renewal / re-shop agent
Open Agents, and Activate a scheduled renewal or re-shop agent. It runs on a schedule and sends you a plain-language briefing (with an optional full-briefing email). See CoverGuard Agents.
6. Connect your AMS
In Sys Admin → Integration Hub, connect AMS360 / Applied Epic (or use Auto-Mapping for a custom system) for bi-directional sync. See Integrations.
Reporting
Brokers get Book-of-Business, Loss Runs, and Carrier Scorecard (quote turn-time, decline rate, bind ratio, QoQ trend) reporting, plus compliance surfaces (audit log, state regulations, E&O). Find these under Toolkit / the reporting surfaces.
Tips
- Commission Tracking works on its own — you do not need to connect an agency management system first. Add an entry with the carrier, the annual premium and your rate, and the strip at the top reconciles what you have earned, what is pending, what has been paid, and your projected annual take across the book.
- Carrier Appointments, Policy Gap Analysis and Premium Competitiveness Analysis each open with a summary strip, so you don't have to count the list yourself: how many appointments are active, pending or expired and how many states they cover; how many properties you've analyzed, how many have critical gaps and their average coverage score; and how many quotes came in competitive or above market, with the average gap against CoverGuard's modeled premium. The figures update as you add or remove items. With nothing saved yet they read zero (and a dash where there is nothing to average). If the summary can't be loaded, the strip is left off rather than showing zeros, and your list underneath works as normal.
- Use Surplus Lines (E&S) Lookup when admitted markets decline — the Record already flags when a property is hard to place. The result gives you the two things you need to act: a list of surplus carrier options (with each one's specialties, AM Best rating and estimated premium) and the diligent search steps for that property's state, numbered in the order to work through them. The steps follow the state's own rule — Florida, for instance, no longer requires three declinations — so check them rather than working from memory. If no surplus carriers come back, the tool says so plainly; that is an answer about the market, not a loading state.
- The quote-to-bind funnel and carrier scorecard show where placements stall and which carriers actually perform.
- Cross-Sell Recommendations reads your Book of Business and lists, for each household, the flood, umbrella or auto-bundle line it's missing — with the reason for each and a link that opens the property's Record to request a quote. See Book of Business.
- Ask the CoverGuard Advisor to draft an insurability summary a client will understand.
Troubleshooting quick hits
- "A reporting or ops feature is locked." — Many are paid-tier. See Billing & plans.
- "AMS sync isn't flowing." — See Integrations & API.
- "My renewal alert didn't fire." — Confirm the client's renewal date is set and the daily scan is enabled. See AI & agents and Alerts.
Do this next
Pull a risk's active carriers, then record renewal dates on your book so the 60/30/7-day alerts start working for you — that combination is where a broker gets the most leverage.