If your intake checklist only exists in a senior underwriter's head, software can't run it. A new hire can't either. That's usually why that underwriter is always busy.

So before you buy intake automation, write the checklist down. It takes about an afternoon:

1. Pull the last ten files your team sent back. Use the rejected ones, not the approved ones. They show you what goes wrong.
2. For each file, write down why it went back. For example: "Loss history only covered two years." "Payslip was from the wrong month." "Account holder didn't match the company."
3. Group the reasons. You'll usually see the same handful come up again and again.
4. Turn each reason into a rule. "Loss history must cover the years our guidelines require" is a requirement. "Salary on the payslip must match the employer statement" is a check.
5. Put it on one page per product.

That page is useful even if you never buy anything. New hires learn what a good file looks like, and brokers know what to send. If you do use an AI intake agent, it's exactly what the agent checks every submission against.

If you skip this step, automation just runs the same guesswork faster.

When your page is ready, our guide on writing facts and verify rules shows how to turn it into a working intake.

PS: Ask two people on your team to write the page separately, then compare. Where they disagree is usually where your files get stuck.