Free tool
Ninety day renewal workload planner
Turn your policy count and line mix into the weekly hours your renewal desk actually needs, then compare that to the hours you have.
Free tool, no sign up
Retention revenue calculator for a P and C book
See what your current retention rate costs in annual commission and what a realistic improvement target is worth to the agency.
Retention is the cheapest growth an independent agency has. A policy you keep costs nothing to acquire, carries no quoting time, and usually earns renewal commission for years. A policy you lose has to be replaced with new business before the agency is back to even, which means quoting time, marketing spend, and a producer conversation that has not happened yet.
This calculator keeps the arithmetic honest. Enter your policy count, blended average premium, blended commission percent, and where retention sits today. It shows how many policies lapse in a year at that rate, the commission attached to them, and what closing the gap to your target would add. Use blended figures if you write both personal and commercial, or run it twice, once per line, if the premiums are far apart.
Your result
Policies lost per year at today's rate
192
The count of policies that do not come back over a full renewal cycle.
Annual commission lost with them
$41,184
Commission that has to be replaced by new business just to stay level.
Annual commission gained at target retention
$12,870
What closing the gap between today and your target is worth each year.
That gain expressed per month
$1,072
Useful when you are weighing the cost of an extra service hire or system.
Figures assume annual policy terms and a blended commission rate, so treat them as a planning range rather than an accounting number.
Why lost renewals cost more than the commission
The commission on a lapsed policy is only the visible part. A household that leaves usually takes more than one policy with it, so an auto lapse quietly removes the homeowners policy and the umbrella at the next expiration. Multi policy discounts also disappear for the client, which makes the remaining policy easier for the next agent to move.
There is a carrier relationship cost as well. Loss ratio and volume drive contingency and profit sharing conversations, and a book that churns hard is a harder book to place. Agencies that measure retention by household as well as by policy tend to see this earlier, because a household level drop shows up before the policy count catches up.
Turning the number into a plan
Once you have the annual figure, divide it by the number of renewals in a quarter to see what a single saved renewal is worth. That number usually justifies far more outreach effort than agencies currently spend, especially on commercial accounts where one save can be worth several months of software cost.
Then pick the two or three points that are actually reachable. Most agencies find them in the same places: homeowners policies carrying large rate increases, commercial accounts that never got an exposure update, and monoline auto clients who have never been asked about the rest of their coverage. Work the expiration list far enough ahead and those three groups are all reachable before the carrier notice lands.
Questions about this calculator
Should I use policy retention or premium retention here?
Use policy retention for this calculator, since it works in policy counts. Premium retention will read higher in a hardening market because rate increases mask lost policies. Running both numbers on your book is worth the effort, because a wide gap between them tells you rate is hiding attrition.
How do I count a rewrite to another carrier?
Count it as retained. The client stayed with your agency, the commission continues, and the work was a save rather than a loss. Track rewrite rate separately so you can see how much of your book is moving between carriers each year.
What retention rate should a small P and C agency expect?
It varies by line, market, and how much of the book sits in catastrophe exposed territory. Rather than chasing an industry figure, measure your own rate for four quarters and treat that as your baseline. Improvement against your own number is the only comparison that holds up.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The 90 day renewal control checklist
Every step a small property and casualty agency should complete between the ninety day mark and the binder, laid out by date.
Every policy behind this number still expires
You have an estimate for the book as a whole. The harder part is knowing which general liability policy sits at eighty days with no loss runs ordered and which homeowners renewal needs the call before the carrier notice reaches the kitchen table. The pipeline dates each stage against the expiration so the answer is on one screen. We will set it up with your own policies rather than our defaults.