For personal lines agencies
Commission reconciliation for personal lines agencies
Personal lines commission goes wrong one small line at a time: a renewal that never paid, a rate below schedule, a cancellation taken back twice. This page covers what Lapidar does with that kind of book, and where it stops.
In short
- Personal lines are high volume, small premiums and mostly direct bill. The risk is a missing or wrong-rate line hidden among hundreds, so the check starts from your book, not from the statement.
- Lapidar works from files: a book export with one row per policy, your commission schedule (carrier, line, new or renewal, rate) and the statements carriers sent, as CSV, XLSX or a PDF with selectable text. Scanned PDFs can’t be read; there is no OCR.
- Every finding (missing, underpaid, overpaid, paid twice, chargeback, not in book, or unchecked when there is no rate) points to the statement page and row or the book row.
Many small policies, mostly direct bill
As our guide to personal lines vs commercial lines commissions puts it, most personal lines business is renewals that change little, paid on direct bill statements. Nobody reads every line of those statements, which is how a single unpaid renewal stays unpaid.
Lapidar takes every policy in your book that should have paid in the statement period and lists the ones with no line at all as missing. Each line that did pay is compared with the book premium times the schedule rate for that carrier, line and new or renewal business. A rounding tolerance, $1.00 by default and optionally a percentage of the expected amount, keeps cents from filling the list. The month-end routine around this is in direct bill reconciliation, and the usual reasons a renewal goes unpaid are in missing renewal commissions.
Installment billing
Many personal policies are billed in parts (see installment billing), so one policy can pay several equal lines over a term. If your book export has the number of installments and the effective date, Lapidar works out how many installments fall due in the statement period and expects that share of the commission. Where the carrier prints an installment number or due date, a second identical line for the same installment is reported as paid twice rather than taken for the next one. Without either, Lapidar allows as many equal lines as installments are due.
Chargebacks from mid-term cancellations
A chargeback usually follows premium returned to the insured: a mid-term or flat cancellation, or an endorsement that lowers premium. Lapidar treats a negative line, or one whose transaction type says cancel, chargeback, reversal, return or refund, as a chargeback and looks for the original payment of the same amount, first on the statements you uploaded for the period and then on earlier statements in your account. A chargeback with no original to pair with is flagged, with a note to check the earlier period; a cancellation taken back twice shows up that way.
Lapidar does not work out what a chargeback should have been. That depends on the unearned premium and the cancellation method, which commission chargebacks explained and the pro rata and short rate cancellation calculator cover. Disputing one is in how to dispute a commission chargeback.
After the check
You mark each finding open, raised or resolved, and print a report per carrier to send. Lapidar never contacts carriers and makes no entries in your agency management system; corrections go there by hand.
Every supported format and limit is on the product page; the output is on the sample report (invented data). Other kinds of agency: commercial lines agencies, agency cluster members.
Frequently asked questions
Does Lapidar check whether a chargeback amount is right?
No. It pairs each chargeback with the original payment it reverses, on the same or earlier statements, and flags the ones with no original. Whether the amount fits the unearned premium is a calculation it does not make.
Do I need a rate for every carrier and line?
Policies with no matching rate are listed as unchecked rather than guessed. A rate can apply to a whole carrier, or be set per line and per new or renewal business.