Meet Howard.

Translabour builds AI software for insurance teams. We are a small group of engineers and researchers, and for the past year most of our time has gone into a single question: what does a broker's working day actually consist of?

To find out, we sat beside brokers and watched. A typical renewal begins with three quotes arriving as PDFs, each laid out differently. Someone copies the premium, the limit and the deductible into a spreadsheet. Then they read each wording for anything that has changed since last year, check the client's shipment log or site list against the exclusions, and write it all up as a recommendation. The same afternoon a client mentions, in passing, that they have opened a new warehouse, and somebody has to remember to check whether it is covered.

None of this is unimportant. A missed exclusion or an unlisted site is exactly what goes wrong at claim time. But it is careful, repetitive reading and copying, and it fills the hours a broker would rather spend with clients. Clients don't choose a broker for their spreadsheets. They choose someone who knows their business and gives sound advice.

Transurance is our answer to that. It is a workspace where a broker's cases, documents and emails sit in one place, with an AI colleague called Howard working alongside the team.

We built it alongside brokers rather than for them. Early versions were tried on sample renewals by people who place cover for a living, and most of what we changed came from their comments: the order of a comparison, the tone of a client note, which documents to open first. Small details like these decide whether a tool gets used once or every day.

Howard is an AI agent. Put simply, he is a piece of software that can read documents, compare them and write, much as a person would. You talk to him in ordinary sentences, the way you would brief a colleague, and he answers in ordinary sentences too.

The closest comparison is a capable junior broker in their first month: quick, careful and happy to do the preparation, but not yet the person who decides. Howard gathers the file, lays out the options, points out what has changed and drafts the email. Then he stops and waits. The broker reads what he has prepared, corrects anything that needs correcting and makes the call.

In practice, Howard reads the quotes, wordings and emails in each case, compares the options, flags what has changed and drafts client notes and requests to carriers. Your broker decides which option to recommend, what goes to the client and when, and anything that needs judgement or a relationship.

That division of work is deliberate. Howard is good at reading forty pages quickly and not losing concentration on page thirty. People are good at judgement, at knowing a client, and at standing behind their advice. We built Transurance so that each does what they are good at.

You don't need to learn anything new to work with him. There are no commands to memorise and no forms to fill in. If a request is unclear, Howard asks a short question back, the way a new colleague would, rather than guessing what you meant.

Take a typical renewal from the Transurance demo. Havenport Freight, a fictional freight company, renews its marine cargo cover on 14 November, and three carriers have quoted. Howard reads the quotes, the market notices and last year's shipment log. He reports that Northgate Marine is the strongest option at $46,800, with a $2.0M limit and a $5,000 deductible. Albion is cheaper at $44,900 but excludes refrigerated cargo, which made up 18% of Havenport's shipments last year. Keel & Co. offers full cover but doubles the deductible to $10,000. Each figure links to the page it came from, and the client note he drafts waits for the broker's approval.

What matters here is less the speed than the order of the work. Howard reads before he answers, checks before he recommends, and stops before anything leaves the firm.

Quote comparison is one job among several. Most of a broker's preparation falls into a handful of them. They differ in detail, but each comes down to reading the right documents, noticing what matters and writing it up. Keep scrolling to look through them.

Because every case keeps its files, emails and earlier answers together, Howard starts each job with the whole history in front of him. A question about a renewal in March can draw on the placement from last November without anyone having to dig it out.

Checking cover works the same way. In the demo, Lena Peeters at Meridian Foods mentions in an email that the company has opened a second warehouse in Antwerp. Howard notices that the site is missing from the property schedule, sees that the renewal is due on 2 December and that the carrier needs updated site values 30 days before, and drafts an endorsement request for the broker to approve.

Anyone can rent a powerful AI model today. On its own, though, a model is a bit like an engine on a workbench. It is impressive to watch, but it won't get a renewal to a client on time. It doesn't know which documents belong to which client, it can't tell you where it found a number, and it will cheerfully answer a question it should have declined.

Most of our work went into everything around the engine: the steering, the brakes, the mirrors and the rules of the road. Engineers call this the harness. It decides what Howard is allowed to read, how he checks his own work, when he must stop and ask, and how every step is recorded. It is the reason a broker can rely on what Howard prepares without redoing it from scratch.

In practice, the harness comes down to six rules. Howard reads the client's own files, not the internet, and says so when the answer isn't there. He labels every figure with the document it came from. He follows your firm's routines, in your house style. He asks before he acts, so nothing reaches a client or a carrier until a named person has approved it. He says when he is unsure instead of guessing. And everything stays on the record, on infrastructure agreed with your team.

None of these rules is clever on its own. Together they mean Howard behaves the same way on the fortieth renewal as on the first, and that when he does get something wrong, a person can see it quickly and put it right.

We hold Howard to these rules with tests as well as design. Before a change reaches a customer, it runs against a set of sample cases with known answers: quotes with planted exclusions, schedules with missing sites, emails that contradict each other. If Howard misses something he used to catch, the change does not go out.

We timed common tasks on sample cases, first by hand and then with Howard. The times with Howard include the broker reading and checking his work, because that step never goes away.

The saving per task matters less than where the time goes afterwards. Across a week, the hours move away from copying and searching and towards talking to clients and giving advice. The chart below shows the same tasks three ways.

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These are early figures from sample cases, and real work is messier. Some files are incomplete, some carriers send scans instead of documents, and some clients need a phone call more than a comparison table. We will publish timings from live workflows as customers agree to share them.

From today, anyone can try Howard on sample cases at translabour.com/insurance. There is nothing to install and no sign-up. The cases are fictional, but the documents look like the ones brokers handle every week, so you can judge his work for yourself.

If you would like to see him on your own work, book 30 minutes with us. We will pick one workflow together, such as renewals or quote comparison, and set Howard up around the way your team already does it. We start small on purpose: one workflow, measured properly, before anything else.

Over the coming months we will extend Howard to more of the work brokers do every week. Each new workflow will follow the same rules as the first: Howard reads the file, shows his sources and waits for a person to decide.