Commissions: Do You Trust Your Carriers?

[BuckNasty]

I've been writing a decent amount of Med Supps and one thing I never do is some sort of tracking of my commissions. I mean I see money hitting my bank account from various carriers for advances and renewals, but I really have no clue what clients they are paying me on.

In your experience are the carriers pretty good about getting this right or is this something I should be paying more attention to. If so, how do you make sure your not getting chooched? Thx!

 

[ICACharleston]

Build a spreadsheet and enter every sale with details, including expected commissions. Follow up with the carrier when you have questions. Worst case is not that you get screwed by the carrier but that a policy isn't issued and the prospect sues you.

 

[Todd King]

I've been writing a decent amount of Med Supps and one thing I never do is some sort of tracking of my commissions. I mean I see money hitting my bank account from various carriers for advances and renewals, but I really have no clue what clients they are paying me on.

In your experience are the carriers pretty good about getting this right or is this something I should be paying more attention to. If so, how do you make sure your not getting chooched? Thx!

I don't think I've ever known a company that isn't susceptible to an error now and then. Most of them get it right 99+% of the time though.

 

[Newby]

They are not perfect. Just check that you get paid on the initial part and the rest will usually go fine.

I've caught over payments much more than underpayments. Forethought used to overpay me by a couple of thousand dollars every time someone would do an early payoff on their 10-pay preneed policies. I would mail checks back to them to correct it but they would argrue with me and claim they were right. They weren't.

My wife caught Anthem Blue Cross overpaying us by $25,000.

Recently I had an FE company over pay our agency a big chunk. I addressed it with them and they let us keep it because it brought a problem they weren't aware of to their attention.

I'm sure we get shorted two but I Haven't caught too many of those.

 

[TFMSINC]

Trust? Of course. But it's always wise to inspect what you expect.

 

[wehotex]

I've been writing a decent amount of Med Supps and one thing I never do is some sort of tracking of my commissions. I mean I see money hitting my bank account from various carriers for advances and renewals, but I really have no clue what clients they are paying me on. In your experience are the carriers pretty good about getting this right or is this something I should be paying more attention to. If so, how do you make sure your not getting chooched? Thx!

It's a PITA, but you should check them. When HealthNet switched over, I found 4 members that were left off ($1,000) and 1 more that was never processed during AEP. Happy Hunting!!

 

[medsuptage]

I've been writing supps for quite a while and for the first 3 years every few months I'd comb through all my commissions and make sure I was getting paid on every single one of my clients ( with several companies). I never found an error. I found what I thought were errors but they weren't . I stopped doing it, so If they'd made a small mistake I probably won't notice. Seems to be a very rare occurrence when it does happen

It's a PITA, but you should check them. When HealthNet switched over, I found 4 members that were left off ($1,000) and 1 more that was never processed during AEP. Happy Hunting!!

That's MA though, completely different animal. Supps are simple.

 

[Todd King]

I've been writing supps for quite a while and for the first 3 years every few months I'd comb through all my commissions and make sure I was getting paid on every single one of my clients ( with several companies). I never found an error. I found what I thought were errors but they weren't . I stopped doing it, so If they'd made a small mistake I probably won't notice. Seems to be a very rare occurrence when it does happen





That's MA though, completely different animal. Supps are simple.

When I first started I did the same thing. If they were a penny off I was on the phone with them! It didn't happen very often but I finally realized that a quick glance was sufficient to notice anything terribly off.

 

[GoPokes]

I don't currently have a system in place to track it. I just check to make sure I get a commission for each app, but I dont check it to the penny. I kinda think the time I would invest to track everything might be better spent prospecting and writing more business. Spending time on the latter option will lead to more money for sure, whereas the former option might lead to no found (shorted) money. But down the road, my mind may change on this outlook.

Occasionally, ill do a spot check on a commission or two as an audit.