Playbooks/Persistency and lapse
A lapsed policy does not just cost this year's commission. It costs every renewal that would have followed it, and it almost always happened for a reason a phone call would have fixed.
Persistency is the share of your policies that stay in force rather than lapsing or being surrendered, usually measured over the first thirteen or twenty-five months. It is the least dramatic number in an agency and one of the most consequential, because renewal income depends on it directly and carrier compensation arrangements frequently take it into account.
It is also the number most agencies manage entirely after the fact. Lapses are noticed on a report, at a point where nothing can be done about them.
A lapse is usually treated as one lost commission. It is not. It is the first-year commission plus every renewal that policy would have paid for the rest of its life, plus the client relationship that came with it, plus whatever they would have bought later.
Set against that, the cost of preventing it is a phone call made at the right moment. Conservation is the cheapest revenue in the business and it is chronically underfunded, because saving a policy feels like admin and writing a new one feels like production.
The comparison worth making. Replacing lapsed premium means acquiring a new client: finding them, paying to reach them, underwriting them, and starting the renewal stream at zero. Saving the existing one costs a letter and a conversation. Agencies that take conservation seriously are not being cautious, they are taking the better trade.
Very few lapses are decisions. Most are drift, and each cause has a different window in which it can be caught.
Only the last of those is a real decision, and even that one usually has an alternative to a total lapse if someone raises it in time.
This does not require a new system. It requires two fields most exports already carry: policy status and the paid-to or next-due date. Our export guides cover pulling them out of each of the main agency management systems.
Then work outwards in order of urgency:
A grace period keeps a policy in force after a missed premium and lets it be brought current. The length is set by the contract and by state law, commonly around thirty days but genuinely variable, so check the policy rather than assuming.
What makes it the moment that counts is what happens on the other side. Once the grace period closes, getting the policy back usually means reinstatement, and reinstatement usually means proving insurability again. For a client whose health has changed in the intervening years, that is not a paperwork step, it is the end of the coverage. The difference between a call inside the grace period and a call a month later can be the difference between a small administrative fix and a policy that cannot be recovered at all.
Not "your policy is about to lapse". It reads as a collections notice, it embarrasses the client, and it invites them to feel judged rather than helped.
Say what is specifically true and make the fix easy. A payment did not go through, here is what to do about it, here is who to call. If the cause is a premium increase at the end of a level term, say that plainly and lead with the alternatives, because "your payment went up and here are three options" is a conversation, while a lapse notice is an ending.
Use more than one channel, and use mail. Conservation cases skew toward clients whose email you may not have and whose address you certainly do, and a letter about their policy gets opened.
Conservation loses to production for structural reasons, not because anyone thinks it is unimportant. It has no pipeline, it is not what producers are compensated to do, and it requires somebody to look at the whole book on a schedule rather than at their own cases. So it happens when there is time, which is to say rarely.
Pendwell Life runs it as a standing process instead. Send a spreadsheet export and we surface the policies in grace, the ones past due, and the ones heading for a premium jump, then write and send the outreach in your agency's name so a producer only handles the call. The scan is free, and names are optional for a first look.
Persistency is the share of an agency's policies that stay in force rather than lapsing or being surrendered, usually measured over a defined period such as the first thirteen or twenty-five months. It matters because renewal income depends on it, and because carrier compensation arrangements frequently take it into account.
A grace period is the window after a missed premium during which the policy stays in force and can be brought current. The length is set by the contract and by state law, and it is commonly around thirty days, though it varies. It is the last easy moment to save a policy: after it closes, reinstatement usually means evidence of insurability.
Export your book with policy status and the paid-to or next-due date, then look for anything past due, anything flagged as in grace, and anything with a paid-to date approaching on a mode that has historically been missed. Monthly-pay policies and recently issued policies both warrant closer attention than the average.
Saving one, by a wide margin. A conserved policy costs a phone call and keeps every future renewal attached to it. Replacing the same premium means acquiring a new client, paying to find them, and underwriting them again, and the renewal stream starts over from zero.
Not advice. This page describes how these situations generally work. Policy terms, carrier rules and state regulations vary, and the governing document is always the contract. Confirm anything you act on with the carrier, and take compliance questions to your own counsel or compliance officer.
The scan is free and there's nothing to integrate. Tell us about your agency and we'll come back with who to call, why, and what it's worth.