Managing complexity and service are the future eTrade battlegrounds

The publication of the annual Insurance Times Five Star Rating Report: eTrading acts as a vital barometer for how brokers feel about digital trading – and highlights where the market’s focus is likely to shift to in the coming years.

Perhaps the most fascinating insight from the report centres around how broker perceptions change over time. These findings can act as an indicator of likely direction of travel for the future.

Also, the data shows that, where a previous pain point has been addressed, that insurers and software houses have successfully acted on market feedback.

As the custodian of imarket, the technology that connects software houses and insurers systems across commercial lines, the data around why brokers choose certain platforms is of particular interest.

Tug-of-war

All things being equal, insurers generally prefer brokers to use their extranets. It allows them to customise the user journey and typically yields better business retention. However, this is often at odds with a broker’s desire to trade from their own system. This year’s report revealed some fascinating shifts in why brokers choose one over the other.

Brokers continue to view extranets as a way to secure better pricing and differentiated coverage that software houses are not currently offering. 

Some 26% of brokers surveyed in the 2026 eTrading report reported that extranets provided better covers than software houses, up from 23% in the 2024 version. And, over the same period, the percentage of brokers that reported extranets provided better prices than software houses rose from 28% to 30%. 

At the same time, brokers saying the reason they used insurer extranets was because insurers encouraged it 32% to 27%, suggesting there was more of an acceptance from broker that there were genuine benefits to using this system.

But while brokers see extranets as a good option for bespoke coverage, this is far less likely to be true for higher-volume products such as property owners or tradespeople.

Those brokers that decided to trade via software houses have their own reasons too. In the survey, respondents that said a software house’s size of panel was important jumped from 37% in 2024 to 45% in 2026, indicating the increasing importance of a broad, searchable marketplace. 

Brokers are seemingly becoming far more savvy about utilising multiple routes to manage their business effectively. The proportion solely using extranets fell from 25% in 2025 to 16% in 2026, while those taking a blended approach – using both extranets and software house systems – rose from 61% to 69%.

And, when asked to pick a preferred route in the 2026 report, 54% favoured software houses, 21% favoured extranets and 20% had no preference.

Clearly, brokers want to use their own systems, but will readily pivot to an extranet if it means successfully placing business.

AI hype cooling down?

The insurance industry’s obsession with artificial intelligence (AI) has not disappeared, but the hyperbole of 2025 has seemingly been hit with something of a reality check.

Broker expectations for AI’s utility have dropped sharply across non-trading categories in the past year – anticipated use in data analysis and reporting fell from 84% in 2025 to 46% in 2026, while expectations around fraud detection dropped from 73% to 46%.

The lone standout was trade execution speed and efficiency, where anticipated AI utility rocketed from just 5% in 2025 to 23% in 2026.

The takeaway is clear – brokers care far less about AI as a theoretical strategy tool and far more about using it to address real-world operational bottlenecks.

Unlocking commercial combined

The fact that brokers are seeing core operational benefits from digital trading does not mean the market has reached its peak – far from it.

UK commercial gross written premium (GWP) stands at over £30bn, yet combined digital GWP across extranets and software houses is realistically around £2-3bn, meaning less than 10% of the market is currently digitally enabled.

As an industry, the high-volume package products – shop, office, property owners, tradespeople, mini fleet and commercial combined – have been successfully digitised.

The first four are simpler risks where a broker expects a first-time quote. For commercial combined, however, the journey must evolve and, through the Polaris Broker Digital Forum, collaboration with major brokers is underway to address this market.

Commercial combined is the new digital battleground and winning it will require more flexibility in how data is collected, more agile product configuration from insurers and seamless supplementary underwriting intervention to handle complex risks digitally.

As product complexity grows, trading via a software house becomes vital to give brokers choice and eliminate time-consuming re-keying across multiple extranets.

Service is improving 

But, to support this digitalisation, it is essential that service increases alongside it.

When a digital risk triggers a referral, broker satisfaction hinges in large part on insurer responsiveness – and the picture here has improved materially over the last three years.

For simple referrals, the proportion resolved in under 30 minutes increased from 18% in 2024 to 28% in 2026, while those resolved within an hour climbed from 32% to 39%. For complex referrals, resolution within four hours rose from 18% to 22% and within one day from 55% to 62%.

Looking ahead, brokers are no longer primarily asking for more insurers on panels – that figure dropped from 52% to 41% in the last year – or more product types, which fell from 55% to 44% since 2025, likely in part due to insurers and MGAs adding more imarket-facilitated products to broker systems.

Instead, the focus has shifted firmly to underwriting appetite and service. The proportion of brokers citing a reduced referral rate on products as a priority rose to 44%, while those wanting a reduced decline rate climbed to 45%.

Brokers frequently note that some insurers will decline a risk digitally but gladly write it manually. Closing this appetite gap is the next frontier.

Interestingly, the proportion citing commission differentials as a factor surged from 15% to 25%, hinting that financial incentives from insurers could provide the nudge required to accelerate digital adoption further.