'High-volume' advisers earn 50% more

Half of the insurance advisers with at least one active policy on their books were not earning enough in commission to make the minimum wage, the Financial Markets Authority says.

Thursday, June 30th 2016, 6:00AM

by Susan Edmunds

That is one of the findings of its report into replacement business, released yesterday.

It said, in 2014, out of 3700 advisers who had one active life insurance policy on their books, 9% earned no commission.

Another 43% earned less than the minimum wage.

But 12% earned more than $100,000 and at least 4% earned more than $200,000.

One adviser earned more than $320,000 , with a lapse rate of 41% and a new business rate of 61%.

On average, the 200 advisers who were identified as meeting the FMA’s criteria for “high replacement” – turning over 12% of policies a year or 40 in a month - earned 50% more in commission than those who were merely dealing with high volumes of clients.

The median number of life policies for all advisers was 33. A quarter of advisers had at least 130 on their books. AFAs tended to have more life policies on their books than RFAs.

The high-volume advisers were more likely to deal with multiple providers. Of these advisers, 36% had at least 90% of their policies with only one provider, 49% had at least 90% of their policies with two or three providers, and 14% had at least 90% of their policies with four or five providers.

Section 25 report – the facts

200 advisers met the FMA’s criteria for a high estimated rate of replacement business
45 high-volume advisers replaced more than 20% of policies in a single year, nine replaced more than 30%.
The median rate of replacement business for RFAs was 7%, compared to 4% for AFAs.
RFAs made up 86% of high-replacement advisers
High-replacement advisers were making, on average $610 per policy per year in commission, compared to $410 for high-volume advisers.
High-replacement advisers had a median policy age of two years, compared to six years for high-volume advisers.
Policies no longer subject to clawbacks were 2.2 times more likely to be replaced if overseas trips were offered as an incentive.
Policies with high upfront commission and lower trail were 1.6 times more likely to be replaced.

Tags: FMA