Four weeks' notice and two hundred clients
An experienced account handler hands in their notice. They look after a couple of hundred commercial clients. In their last weeks they try to write handover notes, but they are also working renewals and new business. The notes they manage are short for most clients and detailed for a few. Their inbox holds half-finished conversations: a client who asked about adding a new site, an insurer query on a claim, a promise to send revised terms next week.
When they leave, their mailbox is redirected, and the new handler starts reading. The first they hear of the new site is when the client rings, annoyed that nobody got back to them.
Where a handler's knowledge lives
Broking systems hold the formal record. But the day-to-day relationship runs through email, phone calls and the handler's own memory. Open items are rarely logged as tasks. Promises made on calls are not written down. And a handover written in the last weeks is always rushed.
- Open requests and promises sit in the handler's inbox.
- Client preferences and history are remembered, not recorded.
- Diary tasks in the broking system are incomplete.
- Handover notes are written in a hurry and vary in detail.
What a poor handover costs
Clients notice immediately. A dropped request, a renewal that starts late, a claim that goes quiet. The new handler spends weeks reconstructing each account. Some clients use the change as a reason to look elsewhere at renewal, which is where the real cost lies.
A handover assembled from the evidence
- For each client, the policies, renewal dates, open claims, open adjustments and diary tasks are pulled from your broking system.
- The departing handler's recent email with each client and insurer is read, and open items are picked out: unanswered questions, promised actions, pending documents.
- A language model drafts a short summary of each client's current position from those sources, which the departing handler reviews and corrects while they still can.
- Each client gets a handover pack: summary, open items with sources, upcoming dates, and space for the departing handler to add anything else.
- Open items become tasks for the new handler with due dates.
- Clients receive an introduction from the new handler in your wording, timed so it arrives before their next renewal contact.
- Managers see handover progress by client, so nothing is left unreviewed on the handler's last day.
Access to a departing employee's mailbox is a matter for your own policy and data protection position. We build within whatever access you decide is appropriate.
The pack for each client
| Section | Source | Checked by |
|---|---|---|
| Policies and renewal dates | Broking system | Automatic |
| Open claims and adjustments | Broking system and trackers | Automatic |
| Open requests and promises | Email and notes | Departing handler |
| Client summary | Drafted from all sources | Departing handler |
| Anything else | Departing handler's own notes | Manager |
It works for more than leavers
The same pack is useful when a handler goes on long leave, when books are rebalanced between teams, or when a new senior broker takes over key accounts. Once the process exists, moving clients between people becomes a routine step rather than a risk.
It also changes behaviour before anyone leaves. When handlers know that open items in their inbox will be picked up by a handover process, logging them properly as tasks becomes the easier habit, and the gap between what the file says and what the handler knows starts to close on its own.
Does this worry you?
- Handovers are written in the last week of someone's notice.
- Open client requests sit in individual inboxes.
- New handlers learn about promises when the client calls.
- You could not say what each handler has outstanding today.