By edition

Insurance broker

You act for the client: take their risk to market, place it with one or more carriers, render the closing, earn brokerage, and hold client money correctly. This guide walks the whole flow.

Best use case

A retail or commercial broker placing risks with insurers — single-carrier or a subscription (co-insurance) panel — who needs the closing statement, brokerage recognised automatically, and a clean client-money (IBA) position for the regulator.

Client riskTo marketSubscribe (signed lines)BindClosing statementBrokerage → ledgerDocuments

Before you start

Two one-time setups make everything downstream faster:

Add your clients
CRM → Accounts. Each insured/client is an account; you can attach contacts and custom fields. A placement links to a client so its documents and commissions roll up per client.
Add your markets (carriers)
CRM → Accounts as well — the insurers you place with. When you subscribe a market to a placement you pick it from this list, so its share and net-to-market are tracked.

Best practice

Set a default brokerage %on each placement up front. It flows into every market's line on the closing statement, and any single market can still override it.

The placement lifecycle

Everything happens on one record — the placement — under Underwriting → Placements.

Create the placement
New placement. Capture the client, insured/risk name, class of business, sum insured, period and default brokerage %. In the same dialog capture the cover terms — cover basis, perils, deductible, limit of indemnity, conditions, warranties, subjectivities. These are structured data, not free text, so the slips generate from them later.
Send it to market
Move the placement to Quoted and start inviting carriers. The status drives what you can do next (you can only bind an open, quoted placement).
Capture the market quotes
For each carrier that responds, add a market quote — premium, commission %, validity and terms. Quotes you mark received become bindable.
Compare
The comparison highlights the cheapest quote and shows, per market, the brokerage and net-to-insurer at your brokerage %. Use it to decide who to place with.
Subscribe the market(s) — signed lines
For a single carrier, bind 100% to it. For a subscription panel, subscribe each market by its signed line % (co-insurance) — 60% lead + 40% follow, etc. The lead market sets the placed (100%) premium. The placement binds automatically when the lines reach ~100%.
Read the closing statement
As you subscribe, the closing statement builds live: per market — premium share = placed premium × signed line, brokerage = share × brokerage %, and net to market = share − brokerage — with totals and a “% placed” badge.

Watch out

Watch the % placed badge. Under 100% is under-placed (unplaced exposure); over 100% is over-subscribed and needs signing down. The placement only binds at ~100%.

Closing statement — KES 1,000,000 placed at 15% brokerage

Lead Ins — 60% line	share 600,000 · brokerage 90,000 · net 510,000
Follow Ins — 40% line	share 400,000 · brokerage 60,000 · net 340,000
Totals	premium 1,000,000 · brokerage 150,000
Net to markets	KES 850,000

Brokerage & the ledger

When the placement is fully placed, iqava auto-accrues your brokerage — one receivable per subscribed market — and posts it to the one general ledger (commission receivable / commission income). It is idempotent, so re-binding never double-books. Nothing to key.

Best practice

Brokerage is yourincome and posts as such. It is separate from client money (below) — don't conflate the two.

Broking documents

From the placement, generate the real paperwork — each rendered from the structured data and stored in the Documents module with a reference, issue/void lifecycle and audit trail:

Quote slip — the risk summary you take to market.
Placing slip — the order presented to the chosen market(s).
Closing statement — the per-market premium / brokerage / net table.

Client money (IBA)

You collect gross premium from the client, of which the net (gross − brokerage) belongs to the market and must be held in a segregated client-money account — you may not commingle it with your own funds. On bind, iqava posts that net as a client-money pass-through (Insurance Broker Account / Insurers payable), and the placements list shows your live IBA position: gross collected, brokerage earned, due to markets, and the client money you should be holding.

Best practice

Reconcile the client money to holdfigure against your segregated bank balance each period — that is exactly the regulator's test.

IBA position — placements 1,000,000 @ 15% and 500,000 @ 10%

Gross premium (from clients)	1,500,000
Brokerage earned (your income)	200,000
Due to markets	1,300,000
Client money to hold	KES 1,300,000

Best practices — recap

Capture cover terms as structured fields at creation, so the slips are correct and consistent.
Set the default brokerage % once; override only where a market's terms differ.
Only bind at 100% placed; resolve under/over-subscription first.
Treat brokerage (income) and client money (held for markets) as distinct — the ledger already does.
Issue the closing statement as the record of the placement to each market.

Related: Documentation overview