Insurance Agent and Broker Base Commission Rate Benchmarks by Line (2026)

A Number the Trade Press Rarely Publishes

Commission rate is the one number that actually determines what a bound account is worth to an agency, and it is also one of the harder figures to find published anywhere. The numbers on this page come from ProducerFlow’s own 2026 statistics roundup, which cites the Big I Market Share Report, 2023 data, the most recent edition cited, rather than from a direct read of Big I’s own report. That secondary-sourcing chain is worth stating plainly before the numbers themselves: re-verify the exact percentages against Big I’s own published report before treating them as final, and note that a newer edition may exist by the time this page is read.

Research into this vertical’s own AI-search prompt gaps flagged “what is the average commission on commercial insurance” as a genuine, unanswered question, not a rhetorical one. That absence is itself a small piece of evidence for how rarely this number gets published anywhere with a named source attached.

What the Blended Average Hides

An 11.4% national average sounds like a single number until the line-by-line spread underneath it becomes visible. Per the same citation, surety commissions run close to 27%, nearly four times what private passenger auto pays at 7.7%, the lowest line named. Homeowners multi-peril sits at 12.4% and excess workers’ compensation at 7.8%, both closer to the all-line blend than either extreme. A book weighted toward surety and a book weighted toward auto are not earning anywhere near the same commission on the same total premium, even before geography is factored in.

Geography moves the number too: the same citation puts Washington, D.C. at 13.8%, the highest state or district named, against 9.9% in Delaware, the lowest. An agency comparing its own blended rate against the 11.4% national figure without accounting for its own line mix and state footprint is comparing against a number that was never built to represent any single agency in the first place.

Why This Number Sits Next to NUPP, Not Apart From It

NUPP, net unvalidated producer payroll, the standard measure of what an agency spends developing a new producer before they are validated as productive, held at 2.0% of revenue in 2025, per the same Big I and Reagan Consulting research ecosystem this page’s commission data comes from. NUPP is the spend side of new-producer investment. Commission rate is the return side, what actually comes back once that producer’s new business finally binds. Neither number means much read alone; an agency deciding how aggressively to fund new-business prospecting is really weighing one against the other, whether that comparison is made explicitly or not.

Reading a 2023 Number Three Years Later

Commission rates by line do not typically move fast year to year, but three years is long enough that a newer edition of the Big I Market Share Report may already exist. This page states the data year plainly rather than presenting 2023 figures as current, consistent with the same honesty standard applied to every other secondary-sourced figure on this site.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• ProducerFlow, US Insurance Agency and Producer Statistics 2026, citing the Big I Market Share Report
• The Insurance Dudes, citing Big I and Reagan Consulting NUPP data

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