Carrier accountability · field guide
Commission gets paid by dozens of carriers, in dozens of formats, every cycle. When a carrier underpays, it never looks obviously wrong on any one line — so it stays buried. Here are the seven recurring patterns, and exactly what to check to catch each one. Free to read, free to share.
The carrier applies a commission rate below what your contract says — 12% paid where your schedule says 15%. On one policy it's a few dollars and looks like rounding. Across a book it's real money.
How to catch it
Compare the effective rate the statement actually paid (commission ÷ premium) against your contracted schedule, policy by policy. Anything below schedule is a short-pay.
A policy renews, the customer is covered, the premium is earned — but the renewal commission never appears on a statement. Nobody notices, because you can't miss a line that was never there.
How to catch it
Match every active/renewed policy in your AMS against the commission statement. Any earning policy with no matching commission line is a missing payment.
New-business commission rates are usually higher than renewal. When a carrier tags a new policy as a renewal (or just pays the lower rate), you're underpaid on the highest-value commissions you write.
How to catch it
Flag every new-business policy paid at or below your renewal rate. The rate the statement used should match the policy's actual new-vs-renewal status in your AMS.
A policy cancels, the carrier claws back the commission — correct. Then the policy reinstates or rewrites, but the commission is never re-paid. The clawback sticks; the re-payment vanishes.
How to catch it
Track every chargeback to its policy. If that policy is active again, there should be an offsetting re-payment. A clawback with no reversal on a live policy is money owed back to you.
An endorsement raises the premium mid-term. The customer pays more, the carrier earns more — but your commission is never trued up to the new premium. The base looks fine; the delta is missing.
How to catch it
Reconcile commission against the current premium of record, not the original. Any premium increase without a matching commission adjustment is an underpayment.
Volume overrides, profit-sharing, and contingent commissions are calculated by the carrier on terms you can't see line-by-line. A shortfall here is the easiest of all to hide — and often the largest.
How to catch it
Hold the carrier's bonus/contingent math against your own book totals (volume, loss ratio, retention) and your contract terms. Make them show their work.
A PDF-only statement with no policy detail, arriving weeks late, makes every pattern above invisible. You can't reconcile what you can't read — and some carriers know it.
How to catch it
Normalize every statement to line-level data the moment it lands, on a clock. The carriers that fight hardest against being reconciled are usually the ones worth reconciling first.
Applied and Vertafore earn revenue from the same carriers that pay your commissions. A tool that grades and fights a carrier on your behalf is a feature they’re structurally unable to ship. Catching these seven patterns means holding the carrier accountable — which is exactly the job an independent, agent-only tool is built for.
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