Insurance Broker Interview Questions and Scorecard

The first broker interview I ever sat in on went badly for a reason nobody in the room noticed at the time. The candidate was warm, quick, and had a good story about every account. Two weeks after he started we found out his license did not cover the lines the agency wrote, and the carrier relationships he described were his old firm's appointments, not his. The interview had tested likeability. It had not tested anything else.

That is the failure mode with this hire. A broker sells advice, so a candidate who talks well clears an unstructured conversation easily, and the things that actually decide whether they can produce for you sit under the surface: license authority, market access, how they read a loss run, and whether they write down the advice a client refuses.

At FirstHR, we build for the owners who run this interview themselves. Below are six question sets written for the employer side, each question with a reason it is worth asking and a note on what a good answer sounds like, plus a scorecard so the decision rests on evidence.

What to Assess in an Insurance Broker

Assess a broker on five things: license and market access, risk analysis, submission quality, book and retention, and documentation habits. Personality is not on that list, which is the point. A broker who is pleasant to talk to and cannot compare two programs on their terms will cost you clients within a year.

The order matters as much as the list. License and market access come first because they are binary: a candidate who cannot place business in your lines is not a hire, and finding that out on a fifteen minute call saves an hour for both of you. Everything after that is a judgment call you make with a rubric.

The most reliable way to run it is a structured interview, where every candidate for the same role answers the same core questions and you score them against the same rubric. That is a more accurate process than a free conversation, and at a brokerage it is also the only way to compare two producers fairly when one of them is simply more charming.

Confirm You Are Hiring a Broker, Not an Agent

A broker represents the client and shops multiple carriers; an agent represents the carrier that appointed them. Decide which one you are hiring before you write the questions, because the two roles are judged on different things and the interview should reflect that.

The licensing distinction is thinner than the practical one. Most states issue a single producer license by line of authority and both roles work under it, but a few keep broker authority separate and attach a condition to it. California is the clearest example: a $10,000 Bond of Insurance Broker on form LIC 417-5 is what authorizes a licensee to act as an insurance broker, while an agent is authorized by a notice of appointment from an insurer instead.

If you are hiring a captive producer for one carrier, the insurance agent question sets fit better than these. If the role shops the market, keep reading, and pair this page with the matching insurance broker job description so the posting and the interview test the same thing.

The Six Question Sets

The sets below run in the order you should use them, from the cheapest filter to the most expensive. Each one exists because it catches something the others do not, and each question carries a note on what a strong answer contains.

6 Free Question Sets to Download

Download all six as one Word document or copy the sets individually. Each follows the same structure: when to use it, the questions with good-answer notes, what to listen for, and space for notes. The last file adds the seven area rubric, a red flag checklist, and the checks to complete before the offer.

Set 1: License, Bond, and Market Access

Lines of authority, states, surplus lines, any bond your state attaches to broker authority, and which carrier and wholesaler relationships travel with the candidate. Use this on the phone screen.

Set 2: Risk Analysis and Coverage Design

Exposure analysis before marketing, reading a five year loss run, and defending a higher quote line by line. The set that separates a broker from someone forwarding the cheapest premium.

Set 3: Submission and Underwriter Negotiation

What goes into a clean submission, what they do with a declined risk, the renewal marketing timeline, and how they protect underwriter goodwill. Most question lists skip this entirely.

Set 4: Book of Business and Client Transition

Volume, retention and how it is calculated, where the last ten accounts came from, and what the candidate signed with their current firm. Ask for a copy of the agreement.

Set 5: Disclosure, Conduct, and E&O Exposure

Written confirmations before binding, documented declinations, compensation disclosure, and the application accuracy question. These are the habits that keep a claim from reaching your carrier.

Set 6: Scorecard and Red Flags

A seven area rubric with evidence lines, an eight point red flag checklist, and the verification steps to finish before the offer. Use it with any of the sets above.

What a Good Answer Sounds Like

A good answer is specific, has a number or a name in it, and describes something the candidate actually did. A weak answer describes a philosophy. That pattern holds across every set, and it is what you are listening for even when the subject matter is outside your own expertise.

The most useful follow-up in a broker interview is some version of what happened next. A strong candidate has the outcome ready: the account bound, the term negotiated, the client who declined and then had the loss. A weaker one returns to generalities, and that retreat is the signal.

Asking About the Book Without Creating a Problem

Ask about the book for an accurate picture, not for a promise. Premium volume, revenue, account count, mix by line, retention and how they calculate it, and where the last ten new accounts came from are all fair and useful. What is not useful is treating the book as a transfer that is already agreed.

Clients belong to the client. Moving an account requires a broker of record letter the client signs willingly, and no amount of enthusiasm in an interview changes that. Layered on top is whatever the candidate signed with their current employer, which is why the fourth question in that set asks for a copy rather than a summary.

The practical rule is to price the hire on what the producer can write for you rather than on a book you assume will follow. If some of it does follow, that is upside. If you built the commission plan around it and it does not, you have a producer on a plan neither of you can live with.

The E&O Questions Most Brokerages Skip

The typical errors and omissions claim against a brokerage is not fraud, it is a gap: coverage the client believed was bound and was not, or a recommendation that was made verbally and never written down. Interview for the documentation habit directly, because it is cheap to test and expensive to discover later.

Three questions do most of the work. How do you document a coverage recommendation a client declines. What do you do when a client says bind it and the signed application has not arrived. And how do you disclose how you are paid, including any fee and any contingent commission the agency receives. Listen for whether the answers come out as reflexes or as things the candidate has heard of.

An E&O question is not an accusation, and a candidate who treats it as one is worth a second look. Producers with long careers have usually been named in something, and the answer that matters is what they changed. Confirm eligibility with your own carrier before the offer, since a claim history can affect your premium.

Pay, Classification, and What to Ask

Anchor pay to the federal survey, then design your own structure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a separate occupation for brokers, so they sit inside Insurance Sales Agents, SOC 41-3021, which blends captive and independent producers.

Ask the candidate what structure they are working under now and what they expect, then be specific back. Base, new business split, renewal split, any validation schedule, and whether a draw is recoverable all belong in the offer, not in a conversation. Vague commission language is the most common source of disputes with producers.

Classification is the other half. The outside sales exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act turns on the facts of the job: 29 CFR 541.500 requires that the primary duty be making sales and that the employee be customarily and regularly engaged away from the employer’s place of business. A broker quoting from a desk generally does not fit it, and the contractor label does not solve the problem either, since those tests look at control rather than at what the agreement says.

Scoring and Red Flags

Score seven areas from 1 to 5 immediately after the interview, anchored to something the candidate actually said. Scoring from memory two days later is scoring the impression, not the answers, and the impression is precisely what a good talker is best at creating.

If more than one person interviews, each should score independently before the group talks, so the most senior voice does not anchor everyone else. A shared interview evaluation form makes that easy, and comparing written evidence first turns a debate into a decision. Finish the verification before the offer rather than after.

Fair, Legal, and Structured Interviewing

A fair interview and an accurate one are the same interview. Asking every candidate the same job-related questions and scoring them on the same rubric keeps you inside the rules and reduces bias at the same time, which is why structure is the recommendation rather than a compliance chore.

Keep every question tied to the job, and watch the small-talk traps about age, family plans, origin, and religion, which are easy to fall into with a candidate you like. The questions you cannot ask are worth reading once before the first call. This is general information, not legal advice.

Interviewing a Broker Without HR

At a national brokerage a producer candidate meets a recruiter, a practice leader, and a panel. At a small brokerage the owner runs the interview alone, between renewals, and carries the cost of a miss personally. Here is how to make that single conversation as rigorous as a full hiring team's.

One more thing that costs nothing: call references and ask about documentation and disclosure specifically, not just about production. A former manager will tell you whether the candidate wrote things down. That is a better predictor of your E&O exposure than anything said in the room, and a reference check with two pointed questions beats one with ten general ones.

From Interview to Onboarding

The interview ends and the paperwork starts, and for a producer there is more of it than for almost any other small business hire. A signed offer and commission schedule, a license copy, carrier appointments, an E&O certificate, continuing education dates, a restrictive covenant, and system credentials, most of them carrying a renewal date.

Start the carrier appointments the day the offer is signed, because they take weeks and a producer without them cannot place business. Everything else belongs in a repeatable sequence rather than an inbox, which is what an onboarding template gives you on day one.

FirstHR connects the offer, the commission schedule, the e-signatures, the new hire paperwork, and the license and certificate records in one place, with renewal dates attached to the documents that expire, so a brokerage without an HR person can run the whole sequence from one system. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider or an agency management system, so pair it with those. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR. For more template question sets and hiring documents, the hiring templates library covers the rest of the process.

Frequently Asked Questions