Ownership refers to the relationship between a customer’s policy and the producers involved in the sale. When a relationship is active, the producer is eligible to receive commission payments for that customer. For a simple example, let’s look at a scenario in which one of our agents, Deborah Willis, sells a large group policy to a new company, Page Mortgage Group. Since Deborah is making the sale, she is the Writing Agent and is also the owner.
Managing Producer Ownership
Objective
After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe the relationship between customers, policies, and ownership.
Producer Ownership
Split Commissions
Often, more than one producer will be involved in selling a policy. If this is the case, the agent who made the sale is still the writing agent, but other agents may still have ownership. Using the same example as above, let’s say that Max Martinez is helping Deborah make sure everything goes smoothly with the Page Mortgage Group policy. Because of this, Saber Management is giving 80% of the commission to Deborah, and 20% to Max.
This is called a split. With a split, multiple Producers are assigned to a single customer. This allows flexibility in compensation rules; however, one producer has to designated as the Primary Owner. In this case, Deborah would be the primary owner.
A split can be equal to 100%, less than 100%, or greater than 100%.
Create Match Rules
In the first example, ownership of the policy is pre-determined. Another way to assign ownership is to use Match Rules. Match rules allow ownership to be assigned based on fields on the policy, such as the product or business type, instead of assigning ownership manually. Keep in mind that match rules can be associated with several types of records, including transactions, policies and brokers.
Let’s look at an example of a match rule on a policy. Saber Management can use a match rules to assign ownership to Max Martinez if a policy is for medical insurance, and to Deborah Willis if the policy is for Property & Casualty.
To make this work, we would create two match rules. We can create these from the Customer record using the following steps:
Steps
From the Manager portal, open Customers→Customer Search and find a customer.
Open the Producer Ownership tab.
Note
The form displays records in the CustomerMatch table.Add a new CustomerMatch record by selecting the Add (+) icon.
Enter the details. In this example, a policy with a Product Type of HMO assigns 100% ownership to Max Martinez (MM-001).
Select Save.
Add a Policy and Create a Customer Ownership Record
Business Example
In this exercise, you will search for the customer record for Page Mortgage Group you created earlier in this unit, add a policy for the record, and add Max Martinez as the owner.
Steps
Search for the Customer record for Page Mortgage Group.
From the Manager portal, select Customers→Customer Search.
In the Search area, find the Name field and enter Page*.
Select Search.
Add a policy to the customer record.
Select the Policies tab.
Select Add (+).
Enter the following policy information:
- Policy ID: AF2005-001
- Name: Page Mortgage Group
- Policy Issue State: California
- Effective Date: May 1, 2025
Select Save.
Create a split in which Max Martinez is the writing agent and receives 100% of the split.
Select the Ownership Assignment tab.
Select Add (+).
Enter the following details:
- Sys Status: Active
- Assigned Producer: MM-001 – Max Martinez
- Assignment Percent: 100
- Schedule ID: Group – Group Business
Select Save.
Summary
- Producer Ownership refers to the relationship between a customer’s policy and the producers involved in the sale.
- Split commissions occur when more than one producer is involved in selling a policy.
- Match rules allow ownership to be assigned based on fields on the policy, such as product or business type.
- Match rules can be associated with several types of records, including transactions, policies, and brokers.