Organise the agency brief into services, access, people and contracts. Give the same factual version to each insurance professional, and ask them to map it to the proposed cover. This framework does not recommend a policy or calculate a suitable limit.
1. Services: name the work, not just the industry
List your deliverables in concrete terms: strategy decks, media buying, creative production, website changes, analytics configuration or account audits. Separate services you deliver regularly from one-off work and services you plan to introduce.
For each activity, name the approval step. Who checks the output, and who can approve a live change? This is useful context for a broker discussion and an internal reminder to keep the description aligned with how projects actually run.
2. Access: document permissions without sharing secrets
Record the categories of access your team holds. Examples include advertising-account administration, billing permissions, customer-data exports and production-site access. Do not put passwords, tokens or personal customer records in the briefing document.
Identify the owner of each type of account and whether access is shared with another agency. Where a question touches a technical control, ask the person responsible to verify the answer. NCSC guidance emphasises understanding existing security controls before arranging cyber cover.
3. People: explain how the work gets done
Describe employees, founders and subcontractors by their responsibilities. If a subcontractor can make live changes without your review, say so in the factual brief. Ask the broker what additional information or evidence is needed for that arrangement.
A simple matrix can help: activity, person responsible, approval owner and location. Do not use this worksheet to determine someone’s legal employment status. Obtain appropriate advice if the arrangement raises a status or employment-insurance question.
4. Contracts: bring the clauses
Attach representative insurance clauses and flag unusual requirements. Include the contracting entities, the services promised, the duration of the obligation and any named court or governing law. Ask an adviser to review contractual interpretation separately from the broker’s explanation of insurance.
For cross-border work, do not simply write “global clients.” Specify the countries connected with the actual contracts. The ABI identifies territorial and jurisdictional limitations as an issue to examine in cyber insurance; make the relevant facts visible when discussing the wider programme too.
Turn the brief into questions
| Agency fact | Question to resolve |
|---|---|
| We manage client campaign settings. | Which professional-services description reflects that work? |
| We hold client platform permissions. | How should we discuss account misuse and response costs? |
| We use external specialists. | What subcontractor information and conditions apply? |
| Our contracts involve both countries. | Which territorial and jurisdictional terms need review? |
Keep a dated version of the brief with every application. When the business changes, update the facts and ask which changes need to be reported. Use the quote comparison guide to capture the answers.
Make the brief usable by someone else
Imagine that a colleague needs to explain the business during your absence. Could they identify the current service list, the person responsible for client access and the location of the signed contracts? A useful brief should point to those records without embedding passwords or personal client data.
Assign a date and owner to the document in your internal records. When something changes, update the facts and keep a short explanation of the change. Ask your insurance professional which updates need to be submitted to the insurer rather than assuming an internal edit is sufficient notice.
For a new quote, share a consistent version through the provider’s appropriate channel. For an actual incident, use the reporting instructions in the policy instead of treating the briefing document as a claims notification.
Sources & further reading
Sources consulted 2026-10-06. Examples and worksheets are original illustrations, not accounts of actual claims.