Insurance Journal’s Agency Salary Survey

Total compensation for insurance agency management, owners, principals and support staff were up in 2017, while total comp for producers declined just slightly over the year before.

That’s according to the 2018 Agency Salary Survey, which revealed that salaries for agency owners, principals and management went up 5.3 percent in 2017, compared to a 4.4 percent jump in 2016.

Producers/sales reported average increases in salary of 3.5 percent in 2017, compared to 4.5 percent in 2016.

Salaries for agency support staff went up 3.3 percent on average in 2017, which was higher than the 2.9 percent raise they got in 2016.

This year’s Agency Salary Survey, based on responses from nearly 1,300 respondents nationwide, also revealed bumps in total income, which includes salary plus additional compensation such as profit sharing, bonuses and other income:

• Agency owners, principals and management reported a rise in total income for 2017, which revealed an increase of 6.3 percent in total income, compared to a 5.5 percent increase in total income for 2016.
• Producers/sales total income went down slightly to 6.2 percent for 2017, compared to a 6.6 percent increase in 2016.
• Agency support staff total income jumped 3.3 percent for 2017, compared to 2.9 percent increase in 2016.

Satisfaction over agency compensation appears to be steadily improving as well:

• Management/agency owners/agency principals reported a compensation satisfaction score of 3.70 in the 2018 survey, up from 3.61 in the 2017 survey, based on a scale of 1-to-5 where “5” equaled “most satisfied.”
• Producers/sales reported satisfaction of 3.23 in the 2018 survey, up from 3.02 in the 2017 survey.
• And support staff/CSR/account executives reported a satisfaction score of 3.08 in the 2018 survey, up from 2.97 in the 2017 survey.

Overall compensation satisfaction scored higher when agencies offered employee benefits, both hard benefits such has group health, dental coverage and stock options and soft benefits such as car reimbursement, trips and contests. (See Employee Benefit Satisfaction Index).

Employee benefit satisfaction ranked highest in the survey when agencies offered added benefits such as a company car (4.03), club memberships (3.94), cash bonuses (3.87), and profit sharing (3.77). However, the survey found that in nearly every employee benefit category, employees showed more satisfaction in regards to overall compensation.

The survey revealed that more agency management/owners/principals plan to increase compensation (45.6 percent) in 2018 compared to 2017 where only 41.4 percent said they were going to increase compensation overall.

More than half of agency management (52.6 percent) also revealed plans to increase hiring in their agency in 2018, which was slightly down from 55.1 percent the prior year.

Nearly one-third of all agency management (65.7 percent) reported giving a year-end bonus in 2017, and more than half of owners (53.5 percent) said those bonuses are distributed to all agency staff.