Retention, sounds easy right? The lifeblood of every agency, renewable income. So then why do so many agencies 1) Not track it and/or 2) Guess…
You may think you can just go off your top carrier’s number. You can’t do that. As an independent agent, you move the business. Book rolls, rewrites etc. You simply can’t go off of those numbers if you want accuracy. What you have to do is track it yourself.
There are two retention rates you need, three if you love numbers and are running commissions on your management system:
- Policy Retention-always the lowest
- Premium Retention
- Revenue Retention-if you are tracking commissions in your management system
So now comes the fun reporting part. How many agents out there don’t run reports because they are never right? Raise your hand. Now shame on you. That’s a terrible answer. You need to work to make them right. Reporting takes some fine tuning. You have to change filters, workflows and even work in Excel to make it right.
The first report you need is the total # of renewals for the month with premium and revenue (if you have it). Use caution with this report. Check to make sure you are getting all renewals because sometimes when the download happens it can clear future renewals off your list. Every management system can do this but you may just need to sit on hold with your friendly customer support person to figure it out.
Next, you need to run all cancellations. Now, we need only truly canceled business so no rewrites or reinstatement. I need just what is gone, gone, gone. Again, you may need to filter.
Now we take the # of cancellations/# of renewals for each bullet point and you will start to see some fun data.
If you add producers and/or CSRs to the mix you can see renewals rates for each.
We work with agencies of all sizes and all management systems to help get this data for everyone.
Try it on your own or if you need help, call us!
