Where premiums and sums insured come from

Achekam's Insurance pack has no rating engine or insurer link. Here is where its premiums, sums insured and settlements come from, and how to check them.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Insurance businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

Brokers who have used insurer-linked systems are used to premiums appearing on screen and policy details updating themselves. Achekam's Industry CRM works differently, and it is better to know that before you rely on its figures than after.

The Insurance pack has no rating engine and no link to any insurer. Every premium, sum insured and settlement in it is a figure your staff typed in from the insurer's documents. That is not a weakness if you treat it properly: the figures are only as good as the care taken entering them, and that care can be built into your routine.

This article explains where the pack's figures come from, what it does and does not handle, and how to check what has been typed, for brokers in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

No rating, no feed

The pack does not calculate premiums. It does not request quotes from insurers, receive policy updates, or read claim settlements from any insurer's system. Quotes, schedules, endorsements and settlement letters all come to you the way they always have, from each insurer, and someone records the figures that matter.

That puts the insurer's document, not the screen, at the centre. If the figure in the pack and the figure on the insurer's schedule ever disagree, the schedule is right and the pack needs correcting.

What gets typed in, and from where

Each pack sets the words its screens use, its record types and the details it keeps, and the Insurance pack keeps Policies, Claims and Quote requests. The figures sit on those records.

Keep the source document alongside. Achekam's Document Centre is a folder-based store where a new version of a document keeps the earlier ones, so a policy schedule replaced by an endorsement is not lost. A folder per client and a sub-folder per policy makes the source of every figure easy to find.

Premiums are not collected through the pack

The Insurance pack collects no premiums. It does not invoice clients for premiums, take premium payments or pass money to insurers. Premiums are paid under whatever arrangement the client and insurer have, and the pack's premium figure is a record of what was agreed, not a bill.

This keeps the broker's own books clean. Premiums are the insurer's money; if they flowed through the pack's invoicing, they would end up looking like the broker's revenue.

What the pack does invoice

The pack invoices only the broker's own commission and fees. Your income, from commission and from any fees you charge the client directly, is what passes through the pack's invoicing and into your books.

That makes the typed premium a reference figure rather than a billing figure. If your commission is a share of the premium, the premium you typed is what you will check the insurer's commission against, so an error there quietly becomes an error in what you expect to be paid. Name the policy on every fee invoice, so the client and your bookkeeper can see which piece of cover each fee relates to.

A routine for checking typed figures

Typing figures from documents is where errors creep in: a transposed digit, a premium entered as monthly when it was annual, an old schedule used after an endorsement. A routine catches most of them:

1. Enter from the document, not from an e-mail summary. Summaries are written in a hurry.
2. Attach or file the document as you enter the figure. Anyone checking can then compare the two.
3. Have a second person check new policies. One person enters, another compares the record with the schedule.
4. Check every endorsement. A change to the sum insured mid-term is easy to miss.
5. Re-check at renewal. The renewal notice is a good moment to confirm every figure on the record.
6. Record settlements from the letter. Not from the client's description of a phone call.

The errors this routine catches are rarely dramatic. The usual ones are an annual premium entered where the schedule shows a monthly one, an old sum insured left in place after an endorsement increased it, a vehicle's cover recorded against the wrong registration, and an excess copied from a different section of the schedule. Each is small on the day it is typed and awkward months later, when a client relies on it.

Why this matters to clients

The figures in the pack drive real conversations: whether a client is underinsured, what their renewal will cost, what a claim paid. A client told the wrong sum insured may make the wrong decision about cover. Treating the insurer's document as the authority, and the pack as your record of it, keeps those conversations honest. In South Africa, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority explains its role as market conduct regulator of financial institutions and how it promotes the fair treatment of financial customers.

The stages a policy moves through, from needs analysis to renewal, are covered in following a policy from needs analysis to renewal. Settlement figures sit on claim records, which following a claim until the insurer decides explains. If a typed figure has already found its way into a journal in the wrong place, correcting a journal posted to the wrong account shows how to put it right.

Agree in your office that the insurer's document always wins, that every figure is entered from it, and that new policies get a second pair of eyes. With those habits in place, a pack without an insurer link becomes a reliable record of your book.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.