Summary of Results:
Following are results of the 2008 compensation survey based upon 308 responses.
The respondents were group reps at the top 10 to 15 ancillary carriers whose main products are Life and LTD but sell additional products including dental or worksite, etc. I included managers I believed to be producing managers, and did not include managers who I believed to be non-producing. I did not include health reps or dental-only reps.
Some of you may notice slightly lower numbers than prior years' results. This is because I am only using W2 information for compensation data. In the past, my intent was to match as accurately as possible the compensation to the sales results. For example, to determine 2007 compensation, a rep would need to take the 2007 W2, then back out the March bonus because that was for 2006 sales, but add in the March 2008 bonus because that was for 2007 sales. Obviously this is cumbersome, with room for error. I think that bonuses were being added to W2’s as the numbers always seemed higher than what I expected based on my conversations with reps. Moving forward I will continue with W2 income only. The bonuses will reach equilibrium and will all end up being counted eventually.
I also changed the bands for years of experience. I previously had a band that included reps with less that 5 years experience. I changed that to less than 3 years, and adjusted the following bands. My feeling is it takes a full 3 years for a rep to hit their stride and see results. At that point they are much closer to a 5 year rep than a 1 or 2 year rep and should be lumped together accordingly.
Finally, I have removed 'average' from the compensation, premium and line count measurements and have used 'median' only. I feel the median is a better representation of the results. Median is defined as the middle number of a group of numbers; that is, half the numbers have values that are greater than the median, and half the numbers have values that are less than the median. The traditional average on the other hand, can be thrown off by one high earner. For example if 9 out of 10 people earn $200k but one person earns $1 million, the average will come out to $280k which does not show the clearer picture that most people are earning $200k.
I hope you find the results interesting. If you enjoy receiving this, but didn’t participate, please do so next year. The more responses I receive, the more credible and meaningful the resulting report.
Thank you.
Steve Faulkner, CEBS
|
Years in Industry: |
less than 3 years |
3-7 years |
8-15 years |
over 15 years |
|
Median total comp* |
$95,000 |
$172,000 |
$277,831 |
$239,500 |
|
Median premium sold* |
$1,000,000 |
$2,065,049 |
$3,500,000 |
$3,000,000 |
|
Median number of lines sold* |
60 |
96 |
100 |
60 |
|
Comp as a percent of premium sold |
10% |
8% |
8% |
8% |
*Median is defined as the middle number of a group of numbers; that is, half the numbers have values that are greater than the median, and half the numbers have values that are less than the median.
