Insurance… We all know it: once taken out, they are forgotten in a drawer. And not just by the insured. Even the brokers who arranged the liability, home contents, and private pension insurance no longer have them on their radar.

This is not negligence, no more than it is for ourselves. Brokers with a large client base cannot keep track of every policy for every client. Consequently, they don’t see that the premium for home contents insurance is now significantly above the market average or that the pension insurance from their student days urgently needs to be reviewed. And they also don’t know that a coverage gap has arisen due to marriage, a child, or a new property.

Usually, this gap is filled by the insured person themselves. In the worst case, however, it’s filled by a competitor. Missed consultation opportunities thus become missed business.

Why the Client Portfolio Becomes a Blind Spot

For you as an advisor, this blind spot weighs more heavily than for anyone else. Yet, it’s no accident. On the one hand, the insurance portfolio grows over decades, and on the other hand, rarely does everything run through a single desk: some policies are with direct insurers, some with comparison portals, some with former intermediaries. This dispersion is why no one sees the complete picture.

For client portfolio management, this is the real hurdle. Even if you knew where a conversation would be worthwhile, you would need to have the complete contract status for every client at hand: premium history, scope of coverage, current life situation. This works for a handful of clients. But not for a portfolio that has grown over years. So you advise when the client calls, not when the opportunity arises. With new clients, the same thing happens on a smaller scale: you inquire about existing coverage contract by contract, even though it’s already documented somewhere. Just not where you can see it.

For a long time, this was manageable. As of January 2027, that will change. With the launch of the Retirement Provision Account (AVD) , millions of existing Riester and pension contracts will become transferable at once. What matters depends on the individual: their costs, their subsidies, their remaining assets. You can only answer whether a change is truly worthwhile if you know the whole person and their situation. Those who only know half will guess.

Identify: Account Activity Reveals the Contract

The solution has long been available. And the first step is less spectacular than you think: seeing the client completely for once. Through a licensed account information service , clients link their accounts themselves, voluntarily and with explicit consent. Only then does what lies outside your own portfolio become visible.

For you as an insurance advisor, it’s the regular debits that make the difference. A monthly contribution to a property insurer, an annual premium, an installment to a life insurer that was previously not in your system. Such transactions lead you to contracts that were outside your view. A nameless debit becomes a concrete review assignment. Here is a policy that deserves a second look.

This visibility is now a technical standard and the basis for everything else.

Classify: From Identified Contract to Substantiated Statement

An identified debit in the advisor portal, by itself, doesn’t help anyone. It only gains value once it becomes classifiable information: What contract is behind it? How high is the premium? How has it developed over the years? This translation turns a data point into knowledge and ultimately into a consultation opportunity.

The extent of enrichment depends on the provider: with many companies, identified contracts can be linked with further contract data; with others, it initially remains at identification from the payment. But the substance lies in the first step anyway: if you know which contracts your client holds and with what premium, you are far ahead of any consultation without this basis.

The principle doesn’t end with insurance. On the asset side , wealthAPI has been working the same way for years: a suitable cost ratio is added to a portfolio position, a risk classification to a fund, and the ongoing burden to a savings plan. Insurance and assets together create a picture that no single system can provide on its own.

The Exchange: Consent for Real Value

All of this stands and falls with one condition that cannot be forced: the client must release their accounts. But from their perspective, there’s no reason to. Who would link half their financial life to a portal just so the other side can more easily sell them something?

This means: the value in return must be clearly visible. And the market is currently showing what that can look like. Neobrokers and comparison apps give their users a daily updated picture of their financial situation, accessible at any time. If you want to succeed as an insurance advisor, you cannot offer your clients less.. In the same app where they can access their accounts, the client gets a complete overview of their contracts, their portfolios, their liquidity. Where this overview is already possible, concrete hints also emerge – for example, about a policy that looks significantly too expensive in a market comparison.

This is the leverage behind it. In the end, both sides benefit: the client gains clarity about everything they have. You get the foundation on which your recommendations can truly stand.

From Signal to Conversation

However, an identified contract is not yet a consultation opportunity. It only becomes one when it is marked as such. This could be a policy above the market average or a coverage gap that no longer fits the new life situation. Such signals should be bundled as a conversation briefing on your desk before the appointment. Compiled by Artificial Intelligence and not through tedious, manual work.

This also changes when advice actually begins. Previously, it required an external trigger: the client contacts you, a contract expires, a claim occurs. However, by continuously monitoring what is happening with a person’s assets, the direction is reversed: the new mortgage financing that appears on the bank statement. The savings rate that has been stagnant for three months. The parental allowance that suddenly comes in. Each of these is an opportunity that arises in the account, long before the client picks up the phone themselves.

Once the data foundation is in place, wealthAPI’s AI takes over the part that costs the most time today. It compiles the conversation document and logs everything: the suitability check, the justification for or against a change, the note for the client file. This doesn’t just save a few minutes. It determines how many clients you can properly serve each month.

What this looks like in an existing client case

What sounds very theoretical can be illustrated with an example of how it could play out daily. Your client Katrin Berger, 44, has been your client for eight years. At that time, you arranged her liability and home contents insurance. Since then, silence, apart from the annual premium debit.

When she connects her accounts in your app, a different picture emerges in seconds. wealthAPI extracts three things from the account movements that no one saw before:

1. First, a loan installment to a bank has been running for four months: Ms. Berger bought a property, but there is no building insurance in her portfolio, and the home contents insurance is still designed for her old rented apartment.
2. Second, a contribution to a car insurer goes out every month, whose premium is about 180 euros per year too high compared to the market.
3. Third, a private pension insurance from her student days continues to run. The costs are very high in comparison, the returns meager – and with the Retirement Provision Account available from January, there is an alternative that can be calculated for her.

From these three signals, wealthAPI builds a fully automated briefing: the initial situation, the figures, three concrete discussion points. You go into the phone call already knowing what you need to talk about. This means you don’t have to ask where the need lies first.

The Data Layer Remains in the Background

One point is particularly important to us: wealthAPI aggregates the data, including existing datasets, and enriches them; the product remains yours. As a data provider and aggregator, we do not enter sales, do not compete for your end customers, and do not build our own offering alongside yours. We are the neutral layer that operates beneath your offering. Brand, customer relationship, and advice remain where they belong: with you.

Regulatorily, more is expected to come. The European FiDA regulation aims to open up data access beyond payment accounts, also for insurance and pension products. But this is taking time, and no one knows when it will truly take effect. Those who wait for it lose the time until then. Technical access to wealth data is already available today, standardized and in use.

January will show which portfolios are truly managed and which were merely administered. Those who then proactively approach clients where something is happening will have seen it in the data beforehand. The rest will send mass emails.