Commercial insurance intake form: what to ask your clients (and what you're probably missing)

The intake form is where commercial insurance submissions either go smoothly or fall apart. Ask the right questions upfront and you get a clean application with no carrier callbacks. Ask the wrong ones — or miss a few — and you're playing phone tag for a week before the submission even goes out.

This guide covers everything a commercial insurance intake form should capture, the questions agents most commonly miss, and how to make the process faster for both you and your clients.

What is a commercial insurance intake form?

A commercial insurance intake form is a questionnaire you send to a business client before starting their commercial application. Its job is to collect all the information needed to complete the relevant ACORD forms — without requiring you to be on the phone with the client or email back and forth for every missing field.

A good intake form captures everything in one shot. The client fills it out once, you get everything you need, and the application goes out the door the same day.

What a commercial insurance intake form should cover

Most commercial submissions require at least an ACORD 125 (commercial application), and often a supplement — ACORD 126 for GL, ACORD 140 for property, ACORD 130 for workers comp. Your intake form needs to pull the information to fill all of them.

1. Business basics

• Legal business name and DBA (if any)
• Entity type — LLC, S-Corp, sole proprietor, partnership
• FEIN or SSN
• Primary business address and any additional locations
• Year the business was established
• Website (if applicable)

2. Operations and exposures

This is where most intake forms fall short. "Describe your business" isn't enough — underwriters need specifics.

• Detailed description of business operations (what they do, for whom, where)
• Annual gross revenue
• Number of full-time and part-time employees
• Use of subcontractors or 1099 workers (and what percentage of revenue)
• Square footage of owned or leased premises
• Any products manufactured, sold, or distributed
• Any work done outside the primary state

3. Property (if applicable)

• Construction type (frame, masonry, fire-resistive)
• Year the building was built and last renovated
• Estimated building replacement cost and business personal property value
• Sprinkler system — yes/no, wet or dry
• Alarm systems and monitoring
• Any unusual contents or inventory

4. Vehicles (if applicable)

• Year, make, model, and VIN for each vehicle
• Whether vehicles are owned, leased, or hired
• Use of personal vehicles for business purposes
• Annual mileage estimates
• Number of drivers and any driving violations in the past 3 years

5. Workers compensation (if applicable)

• Annual payroll broken down by job classification
• Number of owners/officers and whether they want to be included or excluded
• States where employees perform work
• Current experience modification factor (if available)

6. Prior insurance history

• Current carrier name and policy expiration date
• Current premiums and limits (if known)
• Whether coverage has ever been canceled or non-renewed, and why
• Any gaps in coverage

7. Loss history

• Any claims in the past 3–5 years (type, date, amount paid)
• Any open or pending claims
• Any known circumstances that could lead to a future claim

Questions agents most commonly skip

The fields that come back from underwriters most often are the ones agents didn't think to ask:

• Subcontractor use — carriers want to know percentage of work subcontracted and whether certificates are collected. This one question can change pricing significantly.
• Work outside the primary state — coverage territory matters. Many agents assume it's covered; many carriers assume it isn't.
• Products and completed operations — does the business sell, install, or manufacture anything that could cause harm after they've left the job site?
• Officer exclusions on workers comp — in most states, owners can exclude themselves. Many clients don't know this and overpay.
• Prior non-renewals — clients sometimes don't mention a prior carrier dropped them. Always ask explicitly.

The problem with traditional intake forms

Most agents still collect intake information by emailing a PDF, calling the client, or — worst case — interviewing them over the phone and transcribing answers into ACORD fields by hand. Every one of these methods has the same problems:

• Clients don't know what you mean by "entity type" or "FEIN"
• PDFs get lost, printed, scanned, and returned unreadable
• Emails go unanswered for days
• You end up calling to chase down 3–4 missing fields anyway
• You then spend 30–45 minutes re-typing everything into ACORD forms

The average independent agent spends 45 minutes per new commercial account just on intake and data entry. For a 10-account month, that's nearly 8 hours of unbillable administrative work.

What a good intake process looks like

The best intake processes share a few things in common:

• Plain English — questions your client can actually answer without calling you back
• Mobile-friendly — most clients will open it on their phone
• No login required — friction kills completion rates
• Saves progress automatically — clients shouldn't lose their work if they close the tab
• Mapped directly to ACORD fields — so you're not re-entering anything

How AgencyAssist handles intake

AgencyAssist replaces the PDF-and-email process with a smart intake link. You send your client a unique link — they answer plain-English questions from any device in about 10 minutes. No account, no login, no insurance jargon.

Once they submit, AgencyAssist automatically maps their answers to the correct ACORD fields and generates a completed PDF — ACORD 125, 126, 130, 140, and any relevant supplements — along with an underwriting summary that flags any unusual exposures or missing information.

The whole submission is ready in your dashboard before you've had time to make a coffee.

Send clients a smarter intake form

Plain-English questions → completed ACORD forms → underwriting summary. Ready in minutes, not days.