All use cases

Collect / Recover

Insurance premium payment recovery

A premium payment just failed — before the policy lapses and the cover goes with it, the agent has found the cause, prepared the fix, and reached out to keep them protected.

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What it does

When a premium payment fails, the policyholder rarely meant to cancel — a card expired, a direct-debit mandate lapsed, or the account was short on the day. But unlike a missed subscription charge, the consequence is loss of cover: a lapsed policy and an exposed customer who often only finds out when they try to claim. Most never see the failed-payment notice in time. The agent treats the failed premium as the start of a conversation it opens itself, framed around protecting cover rather than collecting a debt: it diagnoses the cause, repairs the payment method, re-bills within the policy's rules, and confirms the cover is continuous — all before the lapse window closes.

How it works

  1. 1
    Trigger. a premium_payment_failed or failed-mandate event arrives from the policy-admin or billing system, with the decline reason and the policy's lapse / grace timeline attached.
  2. 2
    Decision. the agent diagnoses the cause (expired card, insufficient funds, cancelled mandate), reads the policy state and how long until lapse, checks consent and the regulated contact rules, and frames the outreach around continuity of cover. A quality judge gates the message before it goes.
  3. 3
    Action. it opens on the policyholder's preferred channel already knowing the cause and the fix, and sends them to the insurer's secure hosted page to repair the card or re-authorise the mandate. Card details never pass through the conversation, and any re-bill runs only under a money-moving policy class with the customer's explicit confirmation.
  4. 4
    Follow-through. once the customer confirms, the re-bill runs through the billing system and the agent confirms the payment cleared and the cover is unbroken, writing the outcome back to the policy record. If the policyholder pays on their own first, the queued outreach is cancelled. A premium still unpaid as the lapse date nears escalates to a human inside the regulated dunning rules.
Example
AgentYour home-insurance premium didn't go through this month — it looks like the card on file expired. Your cover is still active for now, but to keep it from lapsing we'll need to settle it before the grace period ends. Here's a secure link to update the card, and I can take the payment again once you're ready.
CustomerUpdated the card. Please go ahead.
AgentDone — the premium has cleared and your cover continues with no break. Nothing else is needed from you, and your next payment will run as normal.

Configuration

How the agent is wired for this use case.

Triggera premium_payment_failed / failed-mandate webhook from the policy-admin or billing system, carrying the decline code and the policy's grace / lapse timeline.
Tools & actions
  • Policy-admin system · read policy state, cover status, grace window, and write back the recovered outcome.
  • Billing platform · diagnose the decline code; re-bill or re-present the mandate after explicit confirmation.
  • Payment provider · hand off to the insurer's secure hosted page to repair the card or re-authorise the direct-debit mandate (the agent never touches card data).
  • Messaging channel · open the recovery conversation on the policyholder's preferred channel and confirm continuity of cover.
  • CRM / audit log · record every contact and disclosure for the regulated dunning trail.
Autonomyoutreach and diagnosis run unattended under judge gating; the re-bill / mandate re-presentation is a money-moving policy class requiring the customer's explicit confirmation, and the payment itself completes only on the insurer's secure hosted step.
Channelssms · email · voice · chat
Escalationa premium still unpaid as the lapse date approaches, a disputed charge, or a hardship signal hands off to a human collections or retention specialist inside the regulated dunning rules.

What you need

The inputs this use case runs on. Your channels stay yours; the agent supplies the judgment.

Signals

premium_payment_failed, failed-mandate and decline-reason events, the policy's grace / lapse timeline, customer self-fix events (for cancellation).

Data

policy and cover state, premium schedule and arrears, payment and mandate history, decline codes, consent and channel preferences, customer memory.

Guardrails

money-moving policy class with explicit customer confirmation; secure payment hand-off only, no card data in the conversation; regulated dunning rules (contact windows, required disclosures, audit trail); the agent recovers the premium and confirms cover only — it gives no advice on the policy itself; judge gating on every unprompted message; stale-outreach cancellation when the policyholder self-resolves.

Metrics it moves

  • involuntary-churndown: the failed premium is repaired before the policy lapses, so cover is never lost over a payment glitch.
  • recovered-revenueup: each repaired premium is earned revenue kept on the books; recovery flows in this category reclaim up to half of what would otherwise be lost.
  • renewal-rateup: a policy kept continuously in force through a payment hiccup is far more likely to reach and pass its renewal.

Related use cases

Retain / Save

Premium-lapse grace and reinstatement save

the retain-side flow once the policy is already in its grace window

Collect / Recover

Failed-payment instant recovery

the subscription and fintech parent of this recovery pattern

Collect / Recover

Pre-dunning card update

the upstream reminder that updates the card or mandate before the premium fails

See it on your own customer journey

Bring one drop-off, one churn cliff, or one silent segment. We will show you what a proactive agent with memory and judgment does with it.

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