Extranets v software houses: Where are brokers handling their eTrading?

When conducting eTrading business, brokers are faced with a choice between dealing with an insurer directly through its extranet, opting for a software house platform that aggregates insurer offerings, or managing a combination of the two.

To investigate which eTrading route brokers are opting for in today’s market, and the pros and cons of each route, Insurance Times has analysed the results of its Five Star Rating Report: eTrading 2025.

The eTrading report – now in its 11^th year – is built off of a survey of over 750 brokers conducted between January and March of this year, and assesses the breadth of cover, quality of questions, quality of support, quotability and usability of eTrading platforms.

The majority of brokers, some 61%, reported using a combination of both insurer extranets and software house platforms to meet their eTrading needs. One quarter of brokers said they exclusively used insurer extranets, while just 14% reported using software house platforms alone.

These numbers varied slightly when comparing large and small brokers. Small brokers – those with fewer than 50 employees – were the least likely to use a combined approach, relied more heavily on insurer extranets (29%) and had the lowest rate of software house use at 12%.

The opposite was true for large brokers with over 250 employees, who had a high rate of combined use (62%), a lower rate of extranet use (22%), but the highest rate of relying solely on software house offerings at 16%.

Insurer extranets

For brokers choosing to place their eTrading business through insurer extranets, ease of use was by far the most commonly cited reason for using the trading route, being done so in 49% of responses.

Among insurer extranets, Aviva FastTrade was rated as the best platform for usability and ease of trading, receiving a broker rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. Zurich Online, RSA Online, AIG eXtra and QBE Fastflow also featured in the top five.

Markel Online, Chubb Portal and ERS Online scored lowest for usability, with ERS Online receiving the lowest rating of 3.51 out of 5 stars from brokers.

Better prices than software house platforms (29%), insurers encouraging their use (27%), better covers (24%) and product differentiation (23%) were also commonly cited reasons for use.

Software house platforms

For brokers trading via software house platforms, the ability to make clear comparisons was, expectedly, the most commonly cited reason for use, mentioned in 64% of responses.

Market search ease (59%), document generation (56%), one-time risk data entry (55%) and client data integration (53%) were, perhaps less expectedly, mentioned in more responses than the highest cited response for insurer extranets – highlighting the distinct specialities of the software house offering.

Combined approach

Despite the advantages each platform possesses, most brokers rely on a combined approach to eTrading to avoid missing out on key benefits of the other trading route.

One broker told Insurance Times that they use software house platforms where possible, but that “insurer extranets still offer certain products or covers not available elsewhere”.

Another broker explained: ”There are a few known extranets that are not on our broker management system, so we have to re-key them. As re-keying is time consuming, if we can use our own system this obviously is of benefit to us. However, to do right by the client, we sometimes need to do both.”