The Future of Commercial Lines E-Trading

Breaking free from the chains of legacy providers

Let’s be blunt: the way commercial insurance brokers trade today is fundamentally broken. Not because brokers are bad at their jobs. Not because underwriters are dinosaurs who resist change. But because the infrastructure they’re forced to use was designed to lock in control, not to encourage innovation.

For years, brokers and insurers have been held hostage by legacy e-trading providers and software houses. These platforms dictate how brokers interact with insurers, force carriers into rigid workflows, and kill any chance of real-time product evolution. Insurers can’t iterate on their own products without jumping through hoops. Brokers are forced into using tied-in broker management systems just to get access to e-trade. And if you want something custom? Good luck.

Meanwhile, in every other industry, technology is accelerating competition. Payments? Open banking APIs let fintechs plug in and compete. Telecoms? Cloud-based VoIP services have broken up monopolistic pricing models and let businesses mix and match providers to get the best deal. Even in healthcare, open data sharing and APIs are enabling patient-centric systems that break down barriers between providers. But commercial insurance? Still stuck in a world where a handful of providers dictate the rules.

The Real-World Cost of This Broken System

Take a mid-sized marketing agency in Leicester. They need professional indemnity, cyber cover, and a bespoke package that reflects their actual risk profile—not some generic, one-size-fits-none product. Their broker logs into their clunky software package and tries to get a quote via an e-trade portal. They’re stuck answering a rigid set of questions that don’t quite fit the client or the risk. The insurer's hosted product, effectively equally frustrated, gets an incomplete picture of the risk and either declines the quote or slaps on a default high premium. And the quote the customer receives may well depend heavily on their broker's choice of broker management system! We've seen variances of up to 40% in premium on exactly the same risk being placed through different software providers - it's hard to argue this is achieving fair customer value.

So the broker gives up and goes direct to one insurer portal or emails an underwriter directly. Both they and the underwriter have to start from scratch, each re-keying the data into their own siloed processes. Everyone loses.

And why is nothing changing? Prices for broker software go up year after year with no meaningful improvements to functionality. That isn't to say that the traditional broker management systems don't do things well - they are very effective digital filing cabinets, used to log data and tuck it away for using in the back office. But innovation around the front-end customer and broker experience is stifled because any real progress would threaten the ability to milk the status quo. The result? A market where technological stagnation is the default, and everyone except the PE owners pays the price.

If this marketplace was powered by modern technology, the broker could use a question set designed specifically for marketing agencies. The insurer could customise underwriting parameters on the fly, feeding real-time data into their pricing models. And the entire process—from quote to bind—could happen seamlessly, with full oversight from underwriters where needed. No gatekeepers. No artificial barriers. Just better outcomes for brokers, insurers, and most importantly, the client.

The API Revolution: How Recorder is Changing the Game

This is exactly what Recorder is building: an open, API-first ecosystem where brokers and insurers have full control over their trading experience. We enable fully discretionary question sets—brokers ask what’s relevant, insurers get the data they actually need. Underwriters maintain oversight, but without the handcuffs of legacy systems. And crucially, no one is forced into using comically expensive software they don’t want just to get access to markets.

The future of commercial lines e-trading in the UK isn’t about incremental improvements to old market infrastructure. It’s about blowing up the walled gardens and building something better—something that gives power back to the people actually writing and placing risks.

Legacy providers have had their time. It’s time to move on.

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If you've seen some of this yourself, and you're interested to learn more about what we're building here at Recorder, maybe with a view to joining the rapidly growing numbers of brokers using us, come and see us at Stand F10 at BIBA and we'll be delighted to show you how we're changing the game.