Last reviewed: 15 September 2026

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Does your insurance agent have to tell you how much they're paid?

This is a genuinely different question from our anti-rebating explainer — that page covers what an agent can offer you as an inducement to buy. This one covers whether they have to tell you what they themselves earn for selling you a policy. The honest answer: usually not, unless a specific scenario applies, or you happen to be in one of a small number of states that requires more.

The narrow national baseline

In 2004, the NAIC amended its Producer Licensing Model Act (Model #218) to require compensation disclosure, but only in a specific, narrower scenario than most people assume: where a producer will receive compensation directly from the customer for placing a policy (functioning, in that moment, more like a broker paid a fee by the buyer) and will also receive compensation from the insurer for that same placement, the producer has to disclose the amount and source of that compensation to the customer before the sale. An ordinary commission-only sale — where you pay nothing directly to the producer, and their only compensation comes from the insurer — falls outside that specific trigger, which is how most standard property, life, and auto policies are actually sold.

New York goes further

New York's Regulation 194 (11 NYCRR Part 30), effective January 1, 2011, sets a broader baseline than the national model: every producer, on every sale — not just the dual-compensation scenario above — has to give the customer a mandatory initial written disclosure describing the producer's role in the transaction, whether the producer will receive compensation from the selling insurer or a third party, that the compensation may vary based on a number of factors, and that the customer has the right to request the actual dollar amount or percentage. That last piece is opt-in — New York doesn't force an agent to state the exact number unprompted — but it does force the agent to tell every customer, upfront, that the right to ask exists at all.

Why this varies so much by state

Commission-disclosure rules sit in the part of state insurance regulation that varies the most from the national model, since the underlying model amendment applies to a fairly specific transaction structure rather than every sale. Don't assume your state matches either the narrow national baseline or New York's broader one without checking — your state Department of Insurance's own producer-conduct rules are the definitive source, and a rule that applies in one state may simply not exist in another.

What actually works regardless of the rule

Nothing in any state stops you from just asking directly: "What's your commission on this policy, and does it change based on which company or product I choose?" A producer legitimately isn't always required to answer with the exact number unprompted, but a flat refusal to answer at all — regardless of what your state technically requires — is itself a useful, honest data point about how that specific producer operates, separate from whether a violation of any specific disclosure rule occurred.