Understanding the Difference Between a Prospect and an Insured

What Is a Prospect?

A Prospect is an individual or business that has not yet bound a policy with your agency.

Prospects typically fall under the following categories:

• New leads entering your pipeline

• Contacts gathered from marketing campaigns or referrals

• Clients being quoted but not yet bound

• Former clients re-engaging with your agency

✅ Key Characteristics of Prospects:

• Can be quoted and marketed to

• Can have opportunities, notes, and contact records

• Cannot have active policies or certificates issued

• Will appear in your Opportunities Overview pipeline reports

How Prospects Are Created:

• Manually using “Add New” → Prospect

• Automatically via integrations (e.g., CRM, webforms)

• Imported from CSV during onboarding

What Is an Insured?

An Insured is an individual or business that has one or more active policies written through your agency.

Insureds represent your current customers and are the core of your service, billing, and renewal operations.

✅ Key Characteristics of Insureds:

• Can have active, expired, or canceled policies

• Can receive certificates, endorsements, and invoices

• Appear in service pipelines and accounting modules

• Can be tied to commission and reconciliation workflows

How Prospects Become Insureds:

• Automatically upon binding a policy

• Manually by editing the Prospect’s status and selecting “Convert to Insured”

Why the Distinction Matters

Best Practices

• Create a Prospect first when quoting or marketing to new contacts

• Use Opportunities to track sales stages for Prospects

• Convert Prospects to Insureds only when a policy is bound or pending binding

• Keep inactive clients as Insureds if they had previous policy history

• Clean up unused Prospects regularly to keep your pipeline accurate

Related Articles

• How to Add a New Prospect or Insured

• How to Convert a Prospect to an Insured

• Using Opportunities to Track Sales Progress

• Managing Active vs. Inactive Insureds