SMB
A2A SMB Commercial Lines Agent Standard
Version: 0.1 (Draft for Comment)
Status: Working Draft
Steward: Marrow (onmarrow.com), on behalf of the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) working group
Line of business: UK SMB commercial insurance (packaged commercial and standalone liability lines)
Published: June 2026
This is a draft request for comment. It defines how an autonomous AI agent should assemble, enrich, and transact a UK small-business insurance quote on behalf of an SMB, with minimal demand on the business owner, and how the agent should describe cover back in terms specific to that business. It is published openly so that carriers, agent platforms, and regulators can converge on one shape. Comments to standards@onmarrow.com.
Foundational dependency. This standard relies on the A2A Core Patterns Standard for all shared behavioural rules (grounding and no fabrication, assume-infer-confirm, the advice boundary, disclose-and-acknowledge, fair presentation, honest absence, data protection, vulnerability and Consumer Duty, handover machinery, and audit) and the canonical roles, and on the A2A Consent, Authority and Scopes Standard for authentication and transaction authority. Only the rules distinctive to SMB are stated in full below. The material difference from the personal lines is the enrichment model: motor enriches off two clean database keys, whereas SMB enriches off a messy real-world footprint (the company register, trade directories, the business's own website and social presence). That difference is the hard problem this standard exists to govern.
1. Why this standard exists
Small-business insurance is high-friction by default. The owner faces a long proposal form asking for turnover, wage roll, sums insured, trade classifications, and risk specifics they often cannot answer accurately or quickly. Drop-off is high, and the answers that do get entered are frequently wrong, which surfaces later as a coverage dispute.
An agent changes the economics of that interaction. Given little more than a business name or website, an agent can establish most of the descriptive picture of a business from authoritative and public sources, assemble a structured quote payload, and ask the owner only to confirm facts and supply the few figures that genuinely cannot be inferred. The owner's effort drops from a twenty-minute form to a short confirmation. That is the utility this standard is built to deliver.
But the same capability creates a sharp liability question. If an agent infers a fact about a business and that inference is wrong, a mispriced or voidable policy results. This standard answers that question structurally, in the design principles below: the rail and agent may infer and describe, but the business attests every material fact before bind. The rail is the structurer of the payload, never the warrantor of its truth.
2. Design principles
The shared design principles (carrier-agnostic by construction; no fabrication; observable compliance) are defined in the A2A Core Patterns Standard and apply in full. The principles distinctive to SMB:
Enrich to describe, attest to bind. The agent populates classification and descriptive fields from authoritative and public sources. It must not treat any enriched value as a warranted fact. Before bind, the business owner explicitly attests every material fact: trade and activities, turnover, wage roll, employee numbers, sums insured, and claims history. The rail is the structurer of the payload, never the warrantor of its truth. This is the load-bearing principle of the standard.
Minimal engagement, measured. The agent's goal is to maximise the share of the payload it can populate before involving the owner, and to ask only for what cannot be inferred. This share is a measurable property of the standard (see Footprint Sufficiency, Section 5) and should be reported per quote.
Describe cover back in the business's own terms. A conformant agent does not present generic cover. It translates each line into the specific risks of this trade and this business (for a roofer, the work-at-height exposure; for a consultant, the negligent-advice exposure). This is a behavioural requirement, not a nicety, because it is what lets a non-expert owner judge suitability.
Live demo
The same protocol, walked through interactively. The left panel is the agent's conversation; the right is the canonical smb_quote_request building up, every value tagged with its provenance — enriched, attested, derived, or asked. Watch the Footprint Sufficiency report at step 1 and the enrich-to-describe / attest-to-bind split at step 2; the Bind & pay action stays locked until all six conditions of the bind precondition invariant (defined in the New Business Standards) are met. Step through it:
3. Roles and terms
Roles and terms (Customer, Agent, Surface, Rail, Carrier, Material fact) are defined in the A2A Core Patterns Standard. SMB-specific terms: Business / owner, the SMB seeking cover and the individual attesting on its behalf (the Customer in commercial context); and Footprint, the set of authoritative and public sources describing the business (the company register, trade directories, the business website and social presence).
4. Sources and provenance
- Companies House Public Data API is the free, official register of UK companies. Given a company number or name it returns company name, registration number, registered office, incorporation date, company status, SIC codes, officers, persons with significant control, and filing history including accounts. It is the authoritative source for legal identity, structure, and the nature-of-business classification, and where small-company accounts are filed it can indicate turnover scale.
- SIC codes (Standard Industrial Classification) are the official nature-of-business taxonomy held on the register and map to commercial trade classifications.
- Polaris UK commercial-lines code lists (published via the Polaris Online Database) are the UK general-insurance trade and product code lists the canonical schema should align to, as the motor standard aligns to the personal-lines lists.
- Checkatrade and equivalent trade directories corroborate the actual trade, the services performed, premises, and operating history for trades-based businesses.
- The business website and social presence evidence activities, services, products, premises, and customer base, and are the primary enrichment source where a business is not on the company register (sole traders) or where SIC codes are too coarse.
- UK SME insurer and MGA question sets (Simply Business, Markel Direct, and others) and the statutory framework (the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969) corroborate the required fields and the compulsory-cover rules.
5. Footprint Sufficiency
Footprint Sufficiency is the share of the canonical payload, weighted by materiality, that the agent can populate from enrichment before involving the owner. It is the core metric of this standard and the primary thing a pilot should measure, because it determines whether the "minimal engagement" promise is real for a given business type.
As a working hypothesis to be validated, fields divide into three bands:
- Reliably enrichable (the agent populates, the owner confirms): legal identity, structure, incorporation date, registered office, SIC and trade classification, officers, broad activity and services description, premises address and type, and products or services offered.
- Partially enrichable (the agent estimates a band, the owner corrects): employee headcount, years trading, turnover scale, and the set of cover lines likely to be relevant.
- Not enrichable, must be attested (the agent must ask): precise turnover and projected turnover, wage roll, sums insured for buildings, contents and stock, specific risk activities (work at height, hot works, depth, work away from premises), and full claims and declarations history.
A conformant agent reports the Footprint Sufficiency achieved per quote, and the audit record distinguishes enriched fields from attested ones.
6. Canonical SMB quote request
The agent assembles a smb_quote_request. Fields are marked enrichable, partially enrichable, attested (must be confirmed or supplied by the owner and cannot be warranted from enrichment), or conditional.
6.1 Business identity
| Field | Band | Basis / notes |
|---|---|---|
company_number | enrichable key | Keys the Companies House lookup. Absent for unregistered sole traders, in which case the website footprint is the primary key. |
legal_name / trading_name | enrichable | Companies House; trading name often from the website. |
business_structure | enrichable | Sole trader, partnership, LLP, limited company. Companies House or footprint. |
incorporation_date / years_trading | partially enrichable | Companies House gives incorporation; trading history may predate it. |
registered_office / trading_address | enrichable | Companies House and footprint. |
officers / psc | enrichable | Companies House. PII and PSC data; protected by the rail. |
6.2 Trade and activities
| Field | Band | Basis / notes |
|---|---|---|
sic_codes | enrichable | Companies House. |
trade_code | enrichable | Canonical Polaris commercial trade code, mapped from SIC and footprint. |
activity_description | enrichable | Website, Checkatrade, socials. Attested before bind. |
services_offered / products_supplied | enrichable | Footprint. Drives product-liability and professional-indemnity relevance. |
professional_advice_given | attested | Whether the business gives advice or designs (drives professional indemnity). |
6.3 Financials and people
| Field | Band | Basis / notes |
|---|---|---|
turnover / projected_turnover | attested | Rarely reliable from filed accounts for small companies; must be supplied. A primary rating factor. |
wage_roll / payroll_split | attested | Required for employers' liability rating. |
employee_count / subcontractor_use | partially enrichable | Estimable from footprint, must be confirmed; subcontractor use is a material liability question. |
6.4 Premises
| Field | Band | Basis / notes |
|---|---|---|
premises_type | enrichable | Owned, leased, home-based, none (mobile trade). Footprint. |
construction / security | partially enrichable | Standard construction and security; confirmed by owner. |
buildings_sum_insured / contents_sum_insured / stock_sum_insured | attested | Cannot be inferred reliably; must be supplied. |
business_interruption_indemnity_period | attested | Where business interruption is required. |
6.5 Risk specifics (per relevant line)
| Field | Band | Basis / notes |
|---|---|---|
work_at_height / hot_works / depth_works | attested | Material hazard questions; partially hinted by trade, never assumed. |
work_away_from_premises | attested | |
goods_in_transit / tools_away_cover | attested | |
cyber_exposure | partially enrichable | Online sales and data handling hinted by footprint, confirmed by owner. |
6.6 Declarations (history)
| Field | Band | Basis / notes |
|---|---|---|
claims_history | attested | Five-year claims across all lines. |
previous_insurance_refused_cancelled_voided | attested | Material, high non-disclosure risk. |
insolvency_ccj_history | attested | Directors' insolvency and county-court-judgment history; a standard commercial underwriting question. |
6.7 Cover requirements
The owner selects, or the agent proposes from the trade, the required lines, each with a limit or sum insured:
| Line | Notes |
|---|---|
employers_liability | Compulsory where the business has employees (EL Compulsory Insurance Act 1969); standard limit £10m. The agent must surface the legal requirement. |
public_liability | Typical limits £1m to £10m. |
product_liability | Where products are supplied. |
professional_indemnity | Where advice or professional services are given; typical limits £50k to £5m. |
business_interruption | With an indemnity period. |
commercial_property | Buildings, contents, stock. |
tools_and_equipment | |
commercial_vehicle_or_fleet | Cross-references the motor standard for vehicle-level fields. |
cyber |
7. Enrichment hooks
The rail performs these to assemble the descriptive payload. Every enriched value is presented to the owner for attestation; none is warranted.
| Hook | Source | Populates | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
companies_house_lookup | Companies House Public Data API | Legal identity, structure, incorporation, registered office, SIC, officers, PSC, accounts signals. | Companies House |
sic_trade_mapping | SIC to Polaris commercial code list | Canonical trade code from SIC. | SIC, Polaris |
trade_directory_lookup | Checkatrade and equivalents | Trade, services, premises, operating history. | Trade directories |
web_footprint | Business website and social presence | Activities, services, products, premises, customer base, online-sales and data signals. | Open web |
A carrier may override or supplement any source with its own preferred data vendor; canonical field names do not change. Where a business is unregistered (sole trader), web_footprint and trade_directory_lookup are the primary keys and companies_house_lookup is skipped.
8. Agent behavioural rules (compliance semantics)
The general behavioural rules (no fabrication, information-not-advice, disclose-and-acknowledge, data protection, fair presentation, honest absence and uncertainty) are defined in Core Patterns Section 2 and apply in full. SMB-specific rules:
- Enrich to describe, attest to bind. No enriched value is treated as warranted. Every material fact in Section 6 is attested by the owner before bind, and the audit record marks each field as enriched or attested.
- Describe cover in the business's own terms. Each line is explained against this trade's specific exposures, not generically.
- Surface compulsory cover. Where the business has employees, the agent states the legal requirement for employers' liability.
- Commercial advised sales. Commercial sales more often involve a demands-and-needs assessment; where that applies, it is conducted and recorded. Commercially sensitive data (turnover, payroll, officer and PSC data) is protected by the rail beyond the general PII rules.
9. Canonical SMB quote response
The carrier (via the rail) returns an smb_quote_response with zero or more quote objects, each covering one or more requested lines:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
carrier_quote_reference | Required for bind. |
lines_quoted | Per-line premium, limit or sum insured, and excess. |
total_premium | Annual and any monthly credit terms, with APR disclosed. |
cover_features / key_exclusions | Structured per line; exclusions surfaced under disclose-and-acknowledge. |
endorsements_warranties | Conditions the business must meet (e.g. a hot-works warranty); surfaced explicitly because breach voids cover. |
ipid_or_policy_summary_url | |
validity_expires_at | |
appetite_status | quoted, declined, or referred. Non-standard trades commonly refer to an underwriter; a referral routes to handover. |
10. Handover triggers
The shared handover machinery and common triggers are defined in Core Patterns Section 2.9. SMB-specific triggers, additional to those: non-standard or high-hazard trades causing all quotes to refer; a business risk or structure outside the schema's capacity; a material attested fact conflicting with an enriched value in a way the agent cannot resolve; or capacity concerns about the individual attesting on the business's behalf.
11. Audit requirements
Audit requirements are defined in Core Patterns Section 2.10 and apply in full. SMB-specific evidentiary emphasis: the Footprint Sufficiency achieved per quote, and every field marked as enriched or attested. That enriched-versus-attested distinction is the central evidence that the rail structured the payload without warranting facts it did not own.
12. Versioning and conformance
This standard is versioned (v0.1) and relies on the A2A Core Patterns Standard and the A2A Consent, Authority and Scopes Standard; conformance requires conformance to those at a declared version. A conformant agent implements Sections 6 through 11 in full, including Footprint Sufficiency reporting and the enriched-versus-attested audit distinction. A conformant carrier maps its commercial product to the canonical request and response. v0.2 follows Polaris commercial-lines POD access (to lock the trade and product code lists) and the first pilot's Footprint Sufficiency data (to move the three-band field model from hypothesis to measured fact).
13. Open questions for comment
- Locking the canonical commercial trade and product code lists against Polaris POD.
- Validating the three-band field model (Section 5) against real businesses: how much of the payload is genuinely enrichable per trade type, which is the question a concierge pilot answers directly.
- How the demands-and-needs assessment should be represented for commercial advised sales.
- Handling of unregistered sole traders where Companies House yields nothing and the web footprint is thin.
- The minimum confidence threshold at which an enriched value may be presented to the owner as a suggestion versus withheld.
Published as an open standard. Marrow stewards the drafting but does not assert proprietary control over the interface; the enrichment, compliance, and audit implementations behind it are separate. Marrow structures the payload and does not underwrite or warrant the facts within it. Carriers, agent platforms, and regulators are invited to adopt, critique, and co-author future versions.