Five FMO Comp Models Side By Side: Where Agents Actually Make More Money
Most agents sign with the FMO offering the highest headline rate. Most agents are leaving money on the table. Here is how to run the real math.
The most common question an independent Medicare agent asks when evaluating an FMO contract is: what is the commission rate? It is the wrong question.
Why headline rate is a trap
The headline rate is what you earn on the first year of a new-to-Medicare application. It ignores renewal rate differentials, effectuation percentages, chargeback windows, advance structure, and the override waterfall above you.
An FMO offering $700 on new apps with a 65% effectuation rate and a 60-day chargeback window is often worse than one offering $650 with 82% effectuation and a clean renewal structure. The math changes depending on your book size, disenrollment rate, average client tenure, and whether you are in growth or stability phase.
The five archetypes
Across the MAPD landscape, comp structures fall into roughly five archetypes: advance-heavy/renewal-lite, flat-rate, tiered-by-volume, override-sharing, and equity-adjacent. Each optimizes for a different agent profile and production level.
Running the real numbers
compLAB was built because this analysis did not exist in usable form. Agents were signing contracts based on headline rates and discovering the economics months later. The commission laboratory lets you model any two structures against each other with your own historical data and find your actual break-even point before you sign anything.
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