Guided owner tour · 5 steps
How to analyze insurance agency retention
Start with one opening customer cohort and follow it to a named ending date. Read client, premium, and commission retention together, then inspect the monthly customer movement behind the annual result. Keep new business outside the retention calculation and keep rate-driven premium change distinct from relationships retained.
KEELRIDGE SOFTWARE · REVIEWED · Screens come from a fictional, read-only agency.
Owner viewOpen this page in the live demo →
Captured from the fictional Keelridge Demo Agency.
The short answer
A retention rate is only as useful as its cohort, weighting, and period.
Follow the same starting customers.
Retention asks what remains from the opening group. Closing-book totals include new business and answer a different question.
Count relationships and dollars separately.
Client, premium, and commission retention weight the same cohort differently, so disagreement between them is information.
Inspect when customers and premium moved.
A monthly movement view helps an owner locate losses and arrivals without quietly folding those arrivals into retention.
Freeze the opening cohort before doing the division.
Choose the customers present at the opening snapshot and ask which of those same customers remain at the ending snapshot. A customer acquired during the period was never available to retain, so new business belongs in movement—not in the retention numerator.
The view should state both dates, the Book segment, and the treatment of rewrites, remarkets, and missing identifiers before presenting a percentage.
Try the cohort formula in the public calculator →
Owner viewOpen this page in the live demo →
Measure the same cohort three ways.
Client retention counts every opening customer once. Premium retention weights the cohort by annual in-force premium. Commission retention weights it by annual earning power represented in the AMS.
Commission retention is not booked commission income from the general ledger. It is the recurring commission attached to the opening Book that remains in force at the ending snapshot.
Compare all three measures in the owner demo →
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Read the gap instead of choosing one favorite rate.
Premium retention can look stronger than client retention when smaller accounts leave or premium rises on customers who stay. It can look weaker when a few large accounts leave. Commission retention adds carrier rates and product mix to that comparison.
The gap does not prove why customers left or who caused the result. It tells the owner what to investigate: account size, rate, exposure, coverage mix, or commission assumptions.
Why client and premium retention can move apart →
Owner viewOpen this page in the live demo →
Use monthly movement to find the story behind the annual rate.
The annual retention rate follows one opening cohort. The monthly movement chart answers a related but different question: when premium left with departed customers and arrived with new or returning customers. Those arrivals provide operating context; they do not repair the retention numerator.
A lapse followed by a return can appear once as lost and once as gained in movement while still requiring a consistent rule in the annual cohort result.
Inspect monthly movement in the owner demo →
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Keep the cohort logic consistent every month.
The public calculator is useful when the cohort totals are already known. Keelridge does the harder recurring work: after initial mapping, it compares dated AMS Book records, applies the same customer and period definitions, and fills the owner review. The owner uploads or stages the regular Book file instead of rebuilding the cohort from several reports each month.
See how recurring source files become a review →Interpretation boundaries
What retention analysis can—and cannot—answer.
- It can measure durability.The same opening relationships and economics are followed to a named ending date.
- It can expose weighting effects.Differences between client, premium, and commission retention show where size and earning power matter.
- It cannot supply cancellation reasons.Customer presence in a Book export does not explain why someone left.
- It is not new-business reporting.Arrivals are valuable movement, but they remain outside the opening retention cohort.
Questions from agency owners
Before comparing one retention rate with another.
How do you calculate an insurance agency's retention rate?
Choose the customers present at the opening date, then measure how many of that same group remain at the ending date. Divide retained customers by opening customers for client retention; use the opening and retained premium of that same cohort for premium retention.
Read the note →Why are client retention and premium retention different?
Client retention counts each customer once, while premium retention weights customers by account size and also reflects premium change on customers who stayed. The measures diverge when lost accounts differ in size or retained accounts change in premium.
Read the note →Does new business belong in an insurance agency retention calculation?
No. Retention follows the opening customer cohort forward, so customers acquired after the opening date are excluded from the retention numerator and denominator. New and returning customers belong in a separate movement view.
How often should an insurance agency review retention?
Review movement monthly so losses can be investigated while they are current, but read the headline rate over a complete and consistently defined period such as trailing twelve months or year to date against the equivalent prior-year window.
Continue the tour
Inspect retention in the fictional owner view.
The demo is read-only and uses synthetic customers, policies, premium, and commission figures. Owner entry opens the retention page used throughout this guide.