Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Post related to the commissions paid to insurance agents from Covered California, health insurance, carriers, health plans for assisting consumers with enrollment.
The commission structure for individual and family plans has been on a steady decline since the Affordable Care Act began to be implemented in 2011. As the commissions to agents have decreased, the request from clients for assistance has increased. Now a major carrier has announced a reduction in commissions for small group plans. There […]
Covered California enrollments assisted by Certified Insurance Agents are producing a minimum of $9.2 million per month in commissions as estimated from enrollment statistics released by the states ACA exchange. While this number may sound impressive, a good chunk of the enrollments were for individuals and families who already had health insurance. With many health […]
Through casual conversation and on various Internet forums numerous agents and brokers have mentioned they arent getting paid commissions for business they submitted through Covered California. Is there a crisis of commissions not being paid to Certified Insurance Agents? Without reliable data from the agent community it is hard to tell if the missing commissions […]
Covered California’s Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) announced on May 7th that agent commissions will once again be delayed. This comes on the heels of last months announcement that SHOP hoped to pay commissions at the end of April. SHOP has had to completely move all billing data for the small groups enrolled onto […]
Health Net notified all their California agents by a letter dated January 29th, that effective March 1, 2014, they will slash the sales commission by over 50% on four of their five individual and family plans offered in California. This further reduction in compensation for agents since the ACA was passed continues to make customer service oriented health insurance agents a “family of dinosaurs” who will quickly become extinct.
Agents that are certified to sell Covered California health insurance sign an agreement which in part states that the agent will fairly represent all the different plans. I have faith that all the agents will accurately represent all the plans, but they are under various incentives and realities that may distort some agent’s presentations to clients.
Even though entry level base commissions have been cut, insurance companies have not abandoned all monetary incentives for their outside sales representatives.
