NextAgency helps you comply with Section 202 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (“CAA”). This regulation places obligations on both you and your clients. We strongly recommend you seek guidance from experts to ensure compliance with these requirements. The National Association of Benefits & Insurance Professionals (NABIP) provides valuable information free of charge to its members and can be a helpful resource.
Section 202 requires you to disclose the compensation you expect to receive on a policy under certain circumstances. Regulations spell out the form and content of a Compensation Disclosure Form. NextAgency helps you create this form. However, we can only populate the form with information you provide. This means it's important that you complete specific fields when entering Benefits information as NextAgency uses these fields to generate your Compensation Disclosure Forms.
- Compensation Formula Field: Since a group's premiums may fluctuate from month-to-month, it is challenging to predict the precise commission you expect to earn on their policy. To address this challenge, regulators permit you to report the commission schedule used to calculate your compensation (e.g., 5% or $10 per employee per month). Enter this schedule in this field.
NextAgency can calculate the commission you expect to earn on a policy and use the result to determine if this policy should be included in your Compensation Disclosure Form. To use this calculation you will need to enter the:
- Expected Commission Field: Enter the commission you expect to earn each time your client pays their premium in this field.
- Payment Frequency Field: Enter how often your client pays premium in this field
. - Expected Annual Commission Field: After saving the data you have entered in the Benefits page, NextAgency will calculate this field by multiplying the Expected Commission Field with the Payment Frequency Field. If this amount is $1,000 or more this policy will be included in your Compensation Disclosure Form for this client. If the amount is less than $1,000 it will be excluded from the report unless the Disclosure Required Field is set to Yes.
- Disclosure Required Field: You may instruct NextAgency to ignore the Compensation Disclosure Form in determining whether a policy is included or excluded in the form with this field. When set to Yes, the policy will be included even if the Expected Annual Commission Field is less than $1,000. Setting this field to No excludes the policy from the form even if the Expected Annual Commission Field is $1,000 or more. If left blank, the Expected Annual Commission Field determines whether the policy is included in the form.
Generating Compensation Disclosure Forms
NextAgency will create a Compensation Disclosure Form for each of your clients based on what you have entered in the above fields.
i. Access the Reports section by clicking on "Reports" in the blue navigation pane.
ii. Under the Agency section, select "Comp Disclosure Form (Group)" and click on "Create."
iii. If desired, you can apply filters by clicking on the "Filters" button. For example, you can filter by "Broker Of Record" or generate a disclosure form for a particular client.
iv. By default, the "Disclosure Required" and "Annual Commission" fields are pre-set under the Benefits filter tile. You can modify these values if necessary.
v. Once you have set the desired filters, click on "Run" to generate a zip file containing Word documents for each of your clients that fit the disclosure requirement criteria and include all relevant Benefits information.
NextAgency generates Compensation Disclosure Forms in Word to make it easy to review and edit the form. For example, NextAgency cannot populate information concerning "other compensation" because this data is not tracked in NextAgency. You may also add your agency's logo or other graphic elements as you see fit. You should print the form as a PDF before sending it to your client.
If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact the NextAgency support team.