Renewal reporting, and the denominator that decides everything
Nine metrics with definitions, the calculation that most brokerages get wrong, and a template you can fill in. Free CSV, no email required.
Retention rate is the most quoted number in this industry and it is computed at least three different ways. Only one of them tells you anything.
Download the reporting template (CSV)Retention rate: get the denominator right
Say 100 policies were due to renew in the quarter. 70 renewed, 10 were lost, and 20 are still open because their date has not arrived or the client has not decided.
Wrong: 70 ÷ 100 = 70%. The 20 undecided are counted as failures. Your retention looks terrible all month and recovers at month end, which teaches everybody to ignore the number.
Also wrong: 70 ÷ 80 = 87.5%, reported as final. Correct arithmetic, but quoted before the quarter closes it is a forecast wearing a result's clothes.
Right: 70 ÷ (70 + 10) = 87.5%, of decided renewals only, labelled as such, with the 20 still open reported beside it.
The label matters as much as the arithmetic. "87.5% of decided renewals, 20 still open" is a sentence somebody can act on. "87.5%" on its own invites the question you did not want, three weeks later, in front of the board.
Policy retention and premium retention are different numbers
Keep 87.5% of policies and lose the two largest commercial accounts, and your premium retention might be 60%. Both are true, and a brokerage that tracks only the first can have an excellent-looking quarter while its revenue falls.
Track both, report both together, and when they diverge that gap is the most interesting thing on the page: it means your losses are concentrated at one end of the book.
The two metrics nobody tracks and everybody should
Renewals with no contact logged. The cheapest churn signal available. It requires no model and no score, and it is usually the first number that moves when a brokerage starts paying attention.
Average days to first contact. Ninety days of runway means nothing if the first call happens at day 80. This metric is the difference between having a renewal process and having a renewal deadline.
A third worth adding: the share of lost renewals with a reason recorded. Below about 80%, your retention analysis is guesswork regardless of how good the other numbers look.
What CovioIQ shows, and what it does not
It shows open renewals by window, renewals past their date, premium at risk, churn scores with their reasons, and book premium across the whole book. Those are the inputs to everything above.
It does not ship a retention-rate report. You would calculate it from the renewed and lost counts, which is why the template below exists. Saying so is more useful than implying a dashboard that is not there, and you would find out in the trial anyway.
The template
Nine metrics, each with its definition, numerator and denominator written into the file, so whoever fills it in next quarter computes it the same way you did.
Related: how to reduce policy churn, renewal pipeline, churn scoring, all templates.