Insurance broker and carrier agents: quoting, binding and subrogation

How it works today

Two standards bodies shape how brokers and insurers exchange data in North America, and email fills the gaps between them.

ACORD in the United States. ACORD has published the insurance industry’s standard forms since its first paper form in 1971, and they now come as printable PDFs, fillable forms and eForms. Its property and casualty data standards come in two formats. AL3 is a one-way, batch method for sending policy and commission data. XML supports real-time business transactions as request and response messages, and the current release is P&C XML 2.14.0 (January 2026), with 2.15.0 published as a candidate in June 2026. The XML transaction specifications include commercial property quotes, personal auto and workers’ compensation quote inquiries, claim downloads and vehicle insurance verification. ACORD’s Next-Generation Digital Standards target fine-grained transactions such as microservices and RESTful APIs, across domains that include sales, claims, customer service and finance. The latest final release is 1.13.0 (May 2026).

CSIO in Canada. The Centre for Study of Insurance Operations maintains three sets of data standards for the broker channel: XML for eDocs and real-time transactions, EDI for batch downloads over CSIOnet, and JSON for API standards. It refreshes them monthly. CSIO eDocs deliver documents from an insurer’s system directly into a broker management system, with standard codes for billing, cancellation and lapse, policy transactions, underwriting requests and claims.

Email and portals for the rest. Where no structured link exists, a commercial submission leaves the broker as an email with application forms, schedules and loss history attached. The underwriter’s questions come back the same way, and the quote, the bind request and the binder follow. Each hop means a person reading a document and rekeying it into another system.

Subrogation between insurers. After an insurer pays its own customer, it pursues the at-fault party’s insurer. In the US, Arbitration Forums runs inter-company programs for automobile subrogation, property subrogation, medical payment, personal injury protection and special arbitration. Its E-Subro Hub lets insurers send and receive subrogation demands electronically, attach evidence, and move a demand into arbitration, and its Total Recovery Solution handles filing and responding. In Ontario, the Fault Determination Rules under the Insurance Act require an insurer to determine its insured’s degree of fault for automobile losses according to the rules.

Regulation. In the US, insurance is regulated by the states. The NAIC publishes model laws that states adopt, including the Producer Licensing Model Act (MO-218) and the Insurance Data Security Model Law (MO-668). In Canada, insurance regulators are provincial and territorial, and the Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators is their forum for strengthening and harmonizing oversight.

The agent-to-agent version

Illustrative. A broker’s agent asks a carrier’s underwriting agent to quote commercial property, in A2A v1.0 shapes:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": "sub-3308",
  "method": "SendMessage",
  "params": {
    "message": {
      "messageId": "msg-sub-3308-01",
      "contextId": "ctx-acct-77120",
      "role": "ROLE_USER",
      "parts": [
        { "text": "New business submission: commercial property for a food distributor, one warehouse location." },
        {
          "data": {
            "submissionId": "SUB-3308",
            "lineOfBusiness": "commercial-property",
            "requestedEffectiveDate": "2026-11-01",
            "locations": [
              { "locationId": 1, "construction": "non-combustible", "yearBuilt": 2004, "buildingValue": 6200000, "currency": "CAD" }
            ],
            "priorLossesProvided": true
          },
          "mediaType": "application/json"
        },
        {
          "url": "https://files.broker.example/sub/SUB-3308/loss-history.pdf",
          "filename": "loss-history.pdf",
          "mediaType": "application/pdf"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Then:

1. The carrier’s agent moves the task to TASK_STATE_INPUT_REQUIRED and asks whether the warehouse is sprinklered. The broker’s agent answers on the same task.
2. The carrier’s agent completes the task with a quote artifact: premium, deductibles, conditions and an expiry date.
3. The broker presents options to the client. Once the client approves, the broker’s agent sends a bind request that lists the quote task in referenceTaskIds.
4. The carrier’s agent confirms the binder. Later endorsements and certificate requests run as new tasks in the same contextId.
5. For subrogation, the paying insurer’s agent sends a demand with evidence attached. The other insurer’s agent accepts, offers a share, or disputes, and unresolved demands still go to the forum the insurers already use.

What has to be true

Identity. A carrier must know the agent speaks for a licensed broker it has a contract with, and a broker must know it reached the carrier’s own agent. Licensing is a state matter in the US and a provincial one in Canada, so the check sits outside A2A. A Signed Agent Card proves who holds the key. Tying that key to a licensed producer is a separate step.

Authority. Binding coverage is the moment money and risk change hands. The carrier’s agent needs clear limits on what it may quote or bind without an underwriter, and the broker’s agent needs proof that the client authorized this bind at these terms. A2A offers TASK_STATE_AUTH_REQUIRED to ask for that proof but leaves the credential’s form, scope and revocation undefined (section 7.6.4).

Record. Disputes over coverage turn on what the application disclosed and exactly when coverage was bound. Both sides need the same copy of the submission, the answers to underwriting questions, the quote and the bind confirmation, with timestamps. Where states have adopted the NAIC Insurance Data Security Model Law, its requirements for licensees apply to the data in those exchanges as well.

Shared meaning. A2A does not define insurance fields. Agents should map to ACORD P&C XML or NGDS in the US and CSIO standards in Canada, so that “deductible” and “effective date” mean the same thing to both systems.

Where Emissar fits

• Front Door (Open to design partners): a hosted A2A endpoint where a carrier or managing general agent exposes quote, bind and servicing skills in front of its existing policy systems.
• Verify (In development): checks the broker agent’s key against a known provider record before any quote is issued.
• Mandate (Spec in progress): a proposal for carrying the client’s approval to bind, scoped to one policy and one set of terms.
• Ledger (Spec in progress): a signed receipt of the submission, answers, quote and bind that both sides can retrieve.
• Handoff (In development): refers risks outside appetite or authority to an underwriter with the full exchange attached.

Open questions

• Will ACORD’s Next-Generation Digital Standards and CSIO’s JSON standards become the payloads inside agent tasks, or will agents call them as ordinary APIs?
• Who attests that an agent represents a licensed producer, and how often must that be rechecked?
• Should a carrier’s agent ever bind coverage without a person, and if so, up to what limits?
• Would inter-company arbitration forums accept demands filed by agents, and what evidence standards would apply?