What 150 Insurance Agencies Taught Me About Remote Account Handling

From 2012 to 2019, I worked as a remote account handler representing over 150 insurance agencies across Canada. Not for one broker. Not for a small group I'd built a relationship with over time. For 150 agencies — some long-established, some brand new — all at once.

That number matters. Because every time the phone rang, I was speaking on behalf of a different office, a different culture, a different professional relationship built over years between an agent and their clients. I had to earn the right to stand in for that relationship. Often, I had about sixty seconds to do it.

Here is what that experience actually required.

The first thing clients noticed

Clients of captive agents at The Co-operators were farmers, neighbours, people who had been on the same book for a decade. When a contact centre replaced their local office for overflow calls, many of them noticed immediately — and not warmly.

The phone menu was different. The hold music was different. The voice on the other end was unfamiliar. For clients who expected to reach someone who knew them, that gap was uncomfortable.

What I learned early is that the gap cannot be closed with a script. It can only be closed by demonstrating that you are genuinely paying attention. I asked about risks I didn't recognise. I referenced notes from prior conversations before I said anything else. I treated the file as if it were my own — because for the duration of that call, it was.

The agents who trusted us most were not the ones who handed over their clients without thinking. They were the ones who had tested us, asked hard questions, and watched how we handled the moments that didn't have an obvious answer.

Note-taking, callbacks, and why neither is as simple as it sounds

There is a version of remote support that amounts to message-taking. Someone rings, you say "I'll pass that on," and you do. That is not nothing, but it is not far from nothing either.

Good note-taking in an insurance context means capturing what matters for the next person who touches the file. It means writing clearly enough that a broker returning from leave can understand the situation without calling the client again. It means recording what was asked, what was said, what was left open, and why.

Callbacks require a similar level of care. When a client rang with a question I couldn't answer — a unique risk, a complex mid-term change, something that needed the agent's judgement — I would contact the broker while the client was still on the line. Not because that was always convenient for anyone, but because it was the best effort I could make for that client. If the broker was in a meeting and couldn't respond within a few minutes, I would tell the client exactly that: the message has been sent, they are occupied, and they will follow up. Then I stayed on it until that follow-up happened.

Some brokers wanted that level of accountability built into their working arrangement. Others preferred a lighter touch. I learned to ask, and to adapt. Some accounts also involved unique risks that required agent involvement as a matter of course — unusual property types, higher-value homes, vehicles in high-risk categories, risks in certain postcodes where placement decisions were more involved. Knowing when to act and when to refer is not instinct. It is something you develop through experience and through paying attention to what each broker actually needs.

When the client preferred their own agent

This happened regularly, and it was not a problem.

If a client did not want to deal with anyone but their own agent — even to leave a message — that told me something important. It told me that agent had done their job. They had built a relationship strong enough that the client would rather wait for a call back than accept help from someone they did not recognise.

I never pushed. I took the message, confirmed I would pass it on, and did exactly that. The goal was never to replace the agent-client relationship. It was to support it, keep it moving, and protect it when the agent was unavailable.

That is still the operating principle at UK Broker Support. I am not advisory. I answer what I can within clear boundaries, and I refer everything else back to the broker. I stay in my lane — not because I cannot think beyond it, but because the work only holds its value when the professional boundaries are clear.

What this means for UK insurance brokers considering outsourced account handling

The credibility question behind outsourced account handling is not really about process. It is about judgement.

Can the person handling your client contact tell when a question is routine and when it is not? Can they write a note another professional would trust? Do they understand that your relationship with your clients is not incidental to the work — it is the whole point?

Seven years and 150 agencies gave me a thorough education in what that actually looks like.

If you are a UK insurance broker thinking about what professional remote support could look like for your firm, UK Broker Support Services exists for exactly this.

It costs the broker when that work is done poorly. It costs the client. And it costs the industry, because reputation in insurance is collective — nobody sits outside it. Every interaction between a broker, their clients, and whoever supports them is a small vote for or against how the industry is perceived.

Leif Skogberg is the founder of UK Broker Support Services Ltd, providing remote account handling and operational support to founder-led UK insurance brokers. He holds a Chartered Insurance Professional (CIP) designation from the Insurance Institute of Canada and eleven years of experience across Canada, Germany and the UK.

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