Quote and bind support
🎯 Purpose
Procedure for Sales Operations support of the quote-to-bind cycle where intermediaries need operational intervention: referred quotes, manual ratings, and bind-queue exceptions.
Owner: Distribution Operations Manager · SLA: referred quotes actioned within 4 business hours
📊 Operational overview
Key operational metrics
- Referral response SLA: 4 business hours
- Queue monitoring frequency: every 2 hours
- Target first-time-right bind accuracy: 98%
- Stale referral threshold: 5 working days
- Compliance escalation target: same business day
Continuous improvement priorities
- Reduce avoidable underwriting referrals caused by incomplete submissions
- Improve intermediary data quality at quote initiation stage
- Monitor bind exceptions by intermediary and product line
- Increase automation of commission agreement validation
- Review recurring escalation root causes during monthly operational governance reviews
🛡 Governance and ownership
Role | Operational responsibility | Escalation ownership |
|---|---|---|
Sales Operations | Referral triage, intermediary engagement, bind validation | Initial operational escalation |
Underwriting | Referral assessment for rating exceptions | Rating authority decisions |
Compliance | Sanctions investigation and clearance | Regulatory escalation and hold approval |
Finance Operations | Commission reconciliation exception handling | Financial mismatch resolution |
⚠️ Escalation requirement: Any sanctions-related referral must be frozen immediately and escalated to Compliance before further intermediary engagement.
✅ Procedure
Monitor the referral queue in the policy administration system at least every 2 hours during business hours.
For each referred quote, confirm the referral reason (rating outside authority, incomplete risk data, sanctions flag).
Rating referrals: route to Underwriting via the UW Referral queue — see the Underwriting Operations space, SOP: Risk assessment and referral. Never adjust rating factors manually in the quote.
Data referrals: contact the intermediary through the recorded channel; hold the file open a maximum of 5 working days before closing as stale.
Sanctions flags: freeze the quote, escalate to Compliance immediately, no client contact until cleared.
On bind, verify the policy record created correctly and the commission agreement resolved to the right intermediary. Mismatches go to Finance Operations premium reconciliation as an exception.
🧾 Records and evidence
All interventions are logged in the CRM activity timeline. Referral volumes and turnaround feed the Distribution monthly scorecard in Distribution Performance.