Free tool

Your retention rate, measured three ways.

One book produces three different retention numbers depending on what you count. Enter your own figures to see all three at once, and the gap between them — which is usually the more informative figure. Every formula is shown below the result.

Your figures

Customers

Count the customers you had at the start, then how many of that same group are still with you at the end.

Customers at the start of the period

…still with you at the end

Premium

Use the premium in force for that same starting group, not the whole book at each date.

Premium in force at the start

…still in force at the end

Policies (optional)

Only useful when the question is genuinely about coverage lines rather than relationships.

Policies at the start

…still in force at the end

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What that means

Client retention—Customers kept, each counted once

Premium retention—Dollars kept, weighted by account size

Policy retention—Coverage lines kept

Gap—Premium retention minus client retention

Fill in both the customer counts and the premium figures to see how the two measures compare.

The method

Exactly what was calculated.

Client retention

customers still active ÷ customers at the start

Each customer counts once, whatever they pay. This is the closest measure to whether people want to keep working with the agency, because pricing cannot move it.

Premium retention

premium retained ÷ premium in force at the start

Weighted by account size, so one large account leaving moves it further than several small ones. Commission follows premium, so this is the revenue-durability measure.

Policy retention

policies in force at the end ÷ policies at the start

Counts coverage lines, so a multi-policy household appears several times. Useful for a coverage question, misleading for a relationship one.

The denominator

the same starting group, on both dates

Every figure above measures one cohort forward. Comparing the closing book against the opening book instead would fold new business into a retention number and overstate it.

What this cannot tell you

Whether a customer who left was lost or simply moved to a different carrier through you. A remarket can register as a loss and a gain at once — why that distorts the count.
Whether this period is comparable to the last one. A retention figure only means something read against the same definition over time.
Which of these three your management report is actually showing you. That is worth finding out — the two headline measures can move in opposite directions.

Asked alongside this one.

How do you calculate an insurance agency's retention rate?

Take a group of customers as at the start of a period and divide the number still with you at the end by the number you began with. The same division on premium dollars, for that same starting group, gives premium retention. The two answer different questions and will not usually agree.

What is the formula for premium retention?

Premium retained divided by premium in force at the start of the period, for the same group of customers on both dates. Measuring the closing figure against the whole book rather than the starting cohort folds new business into a retention number and overstates it.

Why do premium retention and client retention give different answers?

Because one weights every customer by size and the other counts each customer once. If the accounts that left were smaller than average, premium retention comes out higher; if they were larger, client retention does. The gap between the two is the size distribution of what left.

Where this comes from

The same question, on your real book.

Keelridge computes these measures every month from named AMS periods, alongside the movement behind them: what was retained, what was lost, what was gained, and what merely transferred between producers.

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