Unbrokered Research
Broker commission rates by benefit line
The blended number hides the story. Medical commissions run a few percent of premium — dental, vision, life, disability, and voluntary lines run several times that. Here is what brokers actually earn on each line, from public Form 5500 filings.
Latest computed plan year: 2024. Refreshed monthly with the Form 5500 dataset.
National distribution
Commission as a share of each line's premium
Each row is the national, all contract sizes distribution of disclosed broker commission (including fees) as a percentage of that line's annual premium, across single-line insurance contracts filed on Schedule A. n is the number of contracts behind the row. The national table on the research page includes every single-line contract on that benefit line. Company pages use the tightest cell with at least 10 contracts — region and size when those exist, otherwise national. The two medians answer different questions, so they are not expected to match. Look up a company to see the region-and-size cell for that employer.
| Benefit line | 10th pct | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct | 90th pct | n (contracts) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medical | 1.7% | 2.9% | 4.2% | 5.3% | 8.1% | 30,092 |
| Prescription drug (carve-out) | 0.5% | 1.5% | 3.1% | 5.0% | 7.6% | 407 |
| Dental | 2.5% | 4.4% | 7.0% | 10.0% | 13.0% | 16,217 |
| Vision | 3.0% | 5.0% | 9.1% | 10.0% | 12.9% | 17,535 |
| Life | 2.3% | 7.5% | 13.4% | 17.8% | 22.0% | 21,607 |
| Short-term disability | 3.4% | 8.8% | 14.2% | 18.5% | 22.7% | 8,365 |
| Long-term disability | 2.7% | 7.8% | 14.0% | 18.1% | 22.2% | 11,730 |
| Stop-loss | 2.0% | 4.6% | 6.9% | 10.5% | 15.8% | 2,073 |
| Voluntary / worksite | 9.1% | 12.9% | 18.4% | 24.2% | 33.8% | 25,331 |
Source: U.S. Department of Labor Form 5500, Schedule A. Rates are (commission + fees) ÷ premium per contract. Cells publish only at n ≥ 10 contracts.
Why the per-line view matters
One blended number can hide a 15% line inside a 4% plan.
Most fee conversations happen at the plan level: one broker, one total, one percentage. But compensation is set contract by contract — and the rates differ by multiples across lines. A plan whose medical line is fee-based can still carry ancillary and voluntary lines paying several times the market-median rate, invisible in the blended figure.
ERISA section 408(b)(2) conditions the prohibited-transaction exemption on necessary services, a reasonable arrangement, and no more than reasonable compensation. The Consolidated Appropriations Act added written compensation disclosures for covered health-plan brokers and consultants. Line-level benchmarking gives a fiduciary evidence at the grain where compensation is reported; it does not by itself make a legal determination.
Commissions on voluntary and worksite products deserve special attention: the premium behind them is typically paid from employee paychecks rather than by the company, and recent ERISA class actions have focused on commissions and loss ratios on exactly that coverage. For the other half of that pairing — what share of each premium dollar actually came back as claims — see group insurance loss ratios.
See these rates for a specific employer
Every company profile on Unbrokered now shows the employer's own per-line commission rates against these distributions — free.
Look up a company →Methodology
How these distributions are computed
- Unit of analysis: the insurance contract as filed on Schedule A. Broker rows on the same contract are summed; the rate is (commission + fees) ÷ that contract's annual premium.
- Line assignment: each contract resolves to one canonical benefit line from its filed benefit-type indicators. Multi-line bundled contracts are excluded — a rate on bundled premium is not comparable to a single-line rate. Health with carve-in prescription coverage counts as medical; carve-out prescription contracts are their own line.
- Voluntary detection: contracts from carriers whose group business is predominantly voluntary/worksite, or whose benefit text indicates voluntary products (accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and similar), are classified as voluntary/worksite regardless of other indicators.
- Outlier handling: Contracts with no premium, premium under $10,000, no disclosed commission, or compensation above $200 per covered person per month are excluded from peer distributions. Rates above 40% of premium on core lines, or 100% on voluntary / worksite lines, are excluded from peer distributions. On a company's own filing those same contracts are marked Not comparable: the filed dollars stay visible, and they carry no peer position.
- Minimum sample: a distribution publishes only when at least 10 contracts stand behind it — the same rule applied across all Unbrokered benchmarks.
- Refresh cadence: recomputed with the monthly Form 5500 ingestion run, per plan year.
Common questions
Broker commission rates, answered
What is a typical broker commission rate on dental insurance?›
Across single-line dental contracts in public Form 5500 Schedule A filings, disclosed broker commission (including fees) typically runs about 4–10% of premium, with a median near 7%. The distribution on this page shows the current computed percentiles.
What commission do brokers earn on life and disability insurance?›
Commission rates on group life, short-term disability, and long-term disability lines run materially higher than on medical — medians around 13–14% of premium, with the 75th percentile near 18%. These lines are where commission concentrates when the medical line is fee-based.
What about voluntary or worksite benefits?›
Contracts on voluntary and worksite products (accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and similar employee-paid coverage) carry the highest commission rates of any line — medians around 14–15% of premium in filed data. Because employees may fund much of that premium, the line deserves specific compensation and value review rather than being hidden in a plan-wide average.
Where does this data come from?›
For plans that file Form 5500 Schedule A, each reported insurance contract can include the carrier, premium, covered lives, benefit line, and commissions and fees paid to brokers. Unbrokered computes rate distributions from those public filings, excluding bundled multi-line contracts and implausible outliers, and only publishes cells with at least 10 contracts.
Why do per-line commission rates matter for ERISA fiduciaries?›
ERISA section 408(b)(2) conditions the service-provider exemption on necessary services, a reasonable arrangement, and no more than reasonable compensation. A single blended number can hide a high-rate line inside a low-rate one, so line-level benchmarks can support a more specific review. They do not by themselves determine legal reasonableness.