Decide what HubSpot owns before you touch a setting: producer relationships, follow-up and campaigns live in HubSpot, while policy terms and binding status stay in your policy admin system. Then connect domains and email, model appointments and policy terms as deals on Professional, and run one real inquiry end to end.
What should HubSpot own, and what stays in the policy system?
HubSpot owns the producer relationship and the follow-up; the policy admin system owns the policy. Write a short account brief before anyone opens Settings. Six answers:
- Business model. MGA, retail agency, wholesaler or carrier.
- First audience. Prospective agencies, appointed producers or policyholders.
- First outcome. An approved appointment, a first qualified submission, or a renewal conversation.
- Source systems. Where appointment, submission, policy and payment status are kept.
- Owners. Who runs distribution, contracting, service, integrations and the account itself.
- Access. Which Hubs, tiers and seats you've bought.
Record each field's owner and the direction it updates, so a manual edit in HubSpot never quietly replaces a policy update.
Don't copy an insurance software vendor's data model into an MGA account. A software demo is not a submission, and a closed software deal is not an issued policy.
A note on tiers, since this guide names them often. Custom objects need Enterprise in any Hub. Calculation properties, custom association labels and workflows need Professional or Enterprise in Marketing, Sales, Service or Data Hub. Emails sent from workflows, the Campaigns tool and tracking URLs need Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise.
How do you connect domains and email without touching your website?
Treat them as three connections, each with its own job.
- Page hosting. Your website can stay where it is. If the main site is www.example.com, a separate hostname such as go.example.com can serve HubSpot landing pages, and your website keeps its address. Connecting a domain needs Super Admin or the Domain Settings permission. Connect a domain to HubSpot.
- Marketing email. A separate connection, under Settings > Content > Domains & URLs > Email Sending. Use a dedicated sending subdomain. HubSpot needs a Starter subscription or higher to connect a sending domain. Understand email sending in HubSpot. If you already have an SPF record, add HubSpot to it rather than creating a second one. Manage email authentication.
- Each rep's inbox and calendar. Every rep connects their own. Agree what gets logged, then test one real email and one booking.
If your site stays off HubSpot, install the tracking code once and embed forms separately; HubSpot says the tracking code itself does not create or install forms. Install the tracking code. Test what happens when a visitor accepts tracking and when they decline it, because consent changes the attribution you get.
What should each landing page do?
Give each landing page one audience and one action, with its own route and owner. Use a permanent page to explain a program; use a campaign landing page for a single step such as applying for appointment or registering for producer training.
| Page | The form captures | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Agency appointment | Agency, producer, program, territory, contact details | An owner reviews it. Contracting sets the appointment. |
| Program appetite briefing | Which program they want to understand | Deliver the briefing and offer the next step |
| Producer training | Attendee, agency, program, event | Confirm registration, record attendance separately |
| Renewal review request | The policy reference, through an approved route | Route to the servicing owner, who confirms the renewal in policy admin |
Collect only what this step needs. Keep underwriting documents, loss runs and anything sensitive in your approved intake system.
For Rainbow, an MGA selling through agents, we built separate landing pages for agents and for restaurant owners: one brand, two audiences, two routes. Test an appointment page with a new inquiry and with a producer who is already appointed. The second must keep their appointment and must not restart recruiting emails.
Then run the cases that break a setup: a returning producer, a producer in two programs, an opted-out contact, a duplicate event from the policy system and a failed sync. Expand to a second campaign only when the team can say which record changed in each case, and why.
How do you model appointments and policy terms on Professional?
Model each appointment per agency and program, because one producer can be appointed for Program A and still waiting on Program B, and a single Appointed checkbox on the person can't say that.
HubSpot custom objects need an Enterprise subscription. Create and edit custom objects. On Professional, this is the model in our property map:
- Producers and agencies are contacts and companies. The agency code from your policy admin system and each producer's National Producer Number (NPN) are the keys that match records across systems.
- Appointments are deals in an Agency appointments pipeline, one per agency and program. An Issuing carrier association label links each one to the carrier whose paper it sits on.
- Policy terms are deals in a Policy renewals pipeline, one per term, keyed on the policy term ID from policy admin. The deal's amount is the term's written premium.
- The agent of record is a Servicing agent association label on the link between the insured and their producer.
- Commission estimates are calculation properties on the term deal, and premium in force is a rollup on the agency. Calculation and rollup properties need Professional or Enterprise. Create calculation and rollup properties. So do association labels. Create and use association labels.
Licensing belongs in the model too. Contracting fills resident license state, licensed lines, license expiration and E&O expiration at application. If licensed lines is blank, nobody gets appointed. On Enterprise, a custom object can hold appointments or policy terms instead of deals; the fields and the one-writer rule stay the same.
Which saved views does each team need?
Build each view around a decision its owner makes. Five to start with:
| View | Filter | What the owner does |
|---|---|---|
| Appointments awaiting review | Agency appointments pipeline, Application received or Submitted to carrier, owner is the rep | Review it and clear the contracting blocker |
| Appointed, no first submission | Agency status Appointed, first submission date unknown, sync current | Offer appetite guidance or training |
| Open deals, no next activity | One pipeline, open stage, owner is the rep | Check the deal's tasks before adding one |
| Renewals due for review | Policy renewals pipeline, In force, expiration inside the review window | Check policy admin, prepare the conversation |
| Stale renewals | Terms in the 120-day window with no sync in 2 days | Fix the sync before anyone acts |
Check a deal's tasks before you trust a blank Next activity date. HubSpot announced a change that would have counted overdue tasks in that property, then cancelled it. The change and its cancellation.
How do renewals reach the people who act on them?
Let the expiration date from policy admin drive every renewal step. First agree a small field contract with whoever owns the policy system: policy term ID, the insured, the producing agency and responsible producer, program and line, effective and expiration dates, policy status, renewal outcome, and the time of the last successful sync. You don't need the whole policy file.
The timeline in the renewal spec:
| Days to expiration | Step | Who acts |
|---|---|---|
| 120 | Data check: any term in the window with no recent sync, no servicing agent or no owner | Ops |
| 90 | Renewal review opens; confirm the term is active and the agent of record is right | Servicing rep |
| 90 | Heads-up email to the servicing agent | Servicing agent |
| 60 | Renewal premium and estimated agency commission, once quoted | Servicing agent |
| 45 | Price-change review if the renewal is more than 15% above the current term | Underwriting and channel manager |
| 30 | Call the agent if nothing has come back | Channel manager |
| 0 | Renewal outcome required | Servicing rep |
Day counts and the 15% threshold are examples. Before any renewal task fires, the workflow checks that the term is still in force and the sync is fresh, and it matches on the policy term ID so a repeated update finds the existing task instead of creating a second one. Before you switch it on, test two policies for the same insured, a changed expiration date, the same sync event twice, a cancelled term and a missing owner.
Commissions work the same way. HubSpot shows an estimate, premium times the agency's rate, so producers and the founder can see it. Billing stays the ledger: reconcile monthly and pay from billing.
FAQs
Can we leave our website where it is?
Yes. Connect a separate hostname, such as go.example.com, for HubSpot landing pages, or keep every page on your own site and embed HubSpot forms alongside the tracking code.
Do we need Enterprise to track policies in HubSpot?
No. Custom objects need Enterprise, but on Professional a Policy renewals pipeline with one deal per term holds expiration, premium, status and renewal outcome. Calculation and rollup properties handle commission estimates and premium in force.
Should HubSpot hold our carrier commission terms?
Decide before you build. Anyone with deal access may see those fields. Either keep them in finance-only fields after checking property access in your account, or keep MGA economics in your finance tools.
When should we connect the policy admin system?
When a workflow needs its data, starting with the fields renewals read. Record what the connector actually transfers before you promise renewal insight. In HubSpot's data sync, custom field mappings need a Data Hub subscription. Connect and use HubSpot data sync.
