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The network puts these around an agency: Carrier access, Stronger economics, Agency growth, Expert support, Technology and tools.

Book Check

Seven reads on your book, in about a minute.

Carrier concentration, retention, your replacement target, cross-sell, mix, revenue per producer and what scale adds. No email, and nothing stored.

See if your agency qualifies How it calculates

No email, no callback, no gate. Every figure below shows the arithmetic that produced it, and every assumption is named. The ones the network has not confirmed yet say so.

This is a worked example, a $3.2M book with a concentration problem, which is the most common shape this sees. Change the numbers beside it for your own.

The short version

3 things stand out: carrier concentration, retention and the replacement target. The one to take first is carrier concentration.

Concentrated, but not dangerously

46% with one carrier

$1.5M of premium and about $188k of annual commission sit with your largest carrier. A rate action, an appetite change or a non-renewal decision taken in a room you are not in moves that much of your income. This is the single most common reason an agency looks at a network, and not because the current carrier is bad. It is because there is no second door.

What to check

Pull premium by carrier for the last three years and look at the trend rather than the snapshot. Then check whether your carriers are genuinely different bets: three carriers all heavily exposed to the same class or the same geography is concentration too, even though it looks diversified by name.

What would move it

Do not rewrite accounts you are happy with to hit a ratio; that is expensive and it annoys clients. Direct new business elsewhere instead, which lowers the percentage by growing the denominator. And get the second market appointed before you need it, because the worst time to go looking is the month your main carrier exits.

Show the arithmetic

index = largest² + (n−1) × ((1−largest)/(n−1))² = 0.270, with 6 carriers. Below 0.18 is well spread; above 0.25 is concentrated.

Below benchmark, and it compounds

81% retained

At 81%, $1.7M of today's $3.2M is still on the books in three years. One point of retention is worth $64k of premium over that period, about $8k of commission, and it costs nothing to acquire. Closing the gap to the 84% benchmark is worth $196k of premium.

What to check

Measure retention by premium and by policy count separately. The gap between them tells you whether you are losing small accounts or large ones, and those are different problems. Then list the last twenty clients who left and write down why. Most agencies have never assembled that list, and the answer is usually not price.

What would move it

Work the single-policy households first: a second policy is both the cheapest premium available to you and the strongest retention move there is. Then move your renewal contact earlier, to ninety days out, so the conversation is a coverage review rather than a defense of a number the client has already seen.

Show the arithmetic

three-year carried premium = premium × retention³. $3.2M × 0.81³ = $1.7M.

You are running to stand still

$608k to replace

At 81% retention, about $608k of premium leaves over the next twelve months, taking roughly $78k of commission with it. That is your floor: new business has to cover it before the agency grows by a dollar. Every point of retention you add lowers this target by about $32k of premium, which is why retention work and new business work are the same conversation.

What to check

Compare this figure against the new business your agency actually wrote last year. If new business was smaller than the replacement target, the book shrank even if it felt busy. Then check how much of the lapsed premium was non-renewed by the carrier rather than lost to a competitor, because those have completely different fixes.

What would move it

Set the new business target above this number explicitly, so everyone is working to a figure that means growth rather than one that means survival. And treat a point of retention as worth the same as the new business it replaces, because it is, and it costs far less to get.

Show the arithmetic

lapsing premium = premium × (1 − retention) = $3.2M × 0.19 = $608k. At a generous 20% close rate that is about $3.0M of premium to quote.

Some headroom

31% multi-line

Moving halfway to the 42% benchmark is roughly $44k of premium and $6k of commission from clients who already answer your calls. It is also the most reliable retention work available: a household with two policies is materially harder to move than one with one.

What to check

Run a list of every client holding exactly one policy, sorted by premium. That list is your cross-sell pipeline and your retention risk register at the same time. While you are in there, check how many of your personal lines clients own a business, because that is the cheapest commercial pipeline you will ever have.

What would move it

Attach the second-policy conversation to something already in the calendar, usually the renewal review, rather than running it as a campaign. Campaigns end. And measure multi-line rate monthly, because it is the one growth metric that moves without any marketing spend at all.

Show the arithmetic

reachable = (42% − 31%) ÷ 2 = 5.5% of clients; added premium = that share × book × 0.25 average policy weight.

Mixed, with room to move

25% commercial

Your blended commission works out at 12.8%, about $408k a year. Moving ten points of the book toward commercial is worth roughly $10k a year on the same premium, before considering that commercial accounts renew harder for a competitor to unseat, and that the mix is one of the first things a buyer looks at when an agency changes hands.

What to check

Check your actual commission rates by carrier rather than relying on the industry figures used above; the blended rate is the number this whole report scales with. Then look at which commercial accounts you already write and what they have in common, because that is the class you are closest to being credible in.

What would move it

Pick one commercial class and learn it properly rather than trying to write all commercial at once. Start inside your own book, where the contractors, landlords and consultants already trust you and somebody else is writing their business cover. Expect to be slower and worse at this for two or three quarters; most agencies that quit do so in month four.

Show the arithmetic

blended = (1−0.25)×12% + 0.25×15% = 12.8%.

Revenue per producer

$102k per producer

$408k of commission across 4 producers is $102k each. There is no industry figure shown beside this one, and that is deliberate: the published references for revenue per producer vary by a factor of three depending on mix, on whether the owner is counted, and on how much service work producers carry. A number nobody can source is worse than no number. What this is genuinely good for is comparing your own producers against each other, because the spread inside a single agency is usually wider than the gap to any benchmark.

What to check

Work this out per individual rather than as an average, and separate new business from renewal servicing. A producer whose book is large and whose new business is nil is a service manager on a producer's compensation, which is both common and fixable. Check how much of each producer's week goes on service while you are in there.

What would move it

If the number is thin across everybody, the fix is management: a defined target market per producer, a validation schedule somebody actually reviews, and service work moved off them. If it is thin for one person against others in the same agency, that is a hiring or coaching question and it needs a direct conversation rather than a process.

Show the arithmetic

revenue = premium × blended commission = $3.2M × 12.8% = $408k; ÷ 4 = $102k.

What scale is worth on this book

$112k a year

On $3.2M of premium, group commission tiering is worth about $64k a year and group contingency about $48k. $112k in total, or $28k per producer, on business you already write. Nothing about how you sell it changes. **Both of these rates are UAA's own figures rather than industry benchmarks, and both are working estimates until the network confirms them. Treat this read as the shape of the arithmetic rather than as an offer.**

What to check

Ask any network you talk to for two things: the commission schedule in writing, and what group contingency actually paid an agency your size in each of the last two years. A model is not a record, and the second question is the one that separates networks that will answer from networks that will not.

What would move it

Model the whole arrangement rather than the headline. Fees in, commission given up in dollars rather than points, expected contingency conservatively, and the cost of the markets you currently cannot place. If the second list does not clearly exceed the first, the arrangement does not pay for itself, however good the meeting was.

Show the arithmetic

uplift = premium × 2.0%; contingency = premium × 1.5%. Both rates are provisional.

See if your agency qualifies What membership costs

Assumptions

Every rate this used, and where it came from.

A calculator that hides its inputs is a sales tool. These are ours, including the two the network still has to confirm.

Industry benchmarks

These describe the sector rather than this network. Your own carrier schedules are always the better number where you have them.

Personal lines commission 12.0% of premium
A mid-range industry figure. The typical range is 10 to 15%, and your own carrier schedules are the number that matters.
Commercial lines commission 15.0% of premium
A mid-range industry figure. The typical range is 12 to 20%, wider by line and by carrier.
Independent agency retention 84.0% of premium retained
A common industry benchmark. Agencies sustaining above 90% are genuinely unusual.
Multi-line household rate 42.0% of clients with 2+ policies
Varies widely by agency and by book type. Treat it as a direction rather than a target.

UAA's own rates

These two drive the "what scale adds" read, and they are working estimates rather than published terms. They appear here, marked, rather than quietly inside the arithmetic. The confirmed commercial terms are on the terms page.

Commission uplift inside a network 2.0% added to the rate not yet confirmed
What group volume adds through tiering. This is UAA's own figure to confirm, not an industry benchmark, and it is a working estimate until it is confirmed.
Contingency and profit share 1.5% of premium not yet confirmed
Earned on the group's loss ratio and volume rather than on one agency's. UAA's own figure to confirm.