GWS-001  Commission Management Issues for Guidewire Support

Issue 1.1

Expired subplans are not removed from the subplan list

A subplan that has passed its expiration date remains in the subplan list indefinitely. There is no mechanism to retire, archive, or hide it. Every rate change we have ever made is therefore still present in the configuration.

The list cannot be made manageable by sorting. Ordering by priority mixes live and expired subplans, because priority determines evaluation order rather than currency. Ordering by expiration date does not separate them either, since the majority of subplans carry no expiration date at all, as shown in Exhibit B.

The consequence is that no one reading the configuration can tell which subplan is currently in force for a given combination of attributes without evaluating the availability criteria and dates of every subplan in priority order by hand.

Nine subplans on one plan, covering two states and two program types across issuance and renewal, plus a Default. The selected subplan carries an effective date of 9 October 2025 and no expiration date. Neither priority order nor expiration date distinguishes live subplans from superseded ones.

Evidence

Exhibit B

Related

GWMAIN-15665, Unable to Edit or Add Expiration Date for Commission Subplans

Impact

Configuration becomes progressively unreadable. Risk of selecting or superseding the wrong subplan grows with every rate change

Issue 1.2

A subplan cannot require both premium received and the policy effective date

Commission must be paid only on premium we have received, and must not begin before the effective date of the policy period the subplan applies to. BillingCenter cannot express both conditions on one subplan.

The Earn Commissions field accepts a single value. On Payment Received satisfies the first requirement but earns commission whenever premium arrives, including before the policy period has incepted. On Effective Date satisfies the second but earns the full amount on that date whether or not premium has been received. There is no option combining them.

Both mechanisms already exist in the product. Event-driven earning fires inline when a payment distributes to an invoice item, and date-driven earning is performed by the Date Based Commission Payable Calculations batch. What is missing is the ability for a subplan to require both conditions to be satisfied before commission earns.

Requested

Allow a subplan to require a payment-received condition and a date condition together, so that commission earns as premium is received but no earlier than the policy period effective date

Impact

Commission is paid on policy terms that have not incepted and may still cancel flat

Issue 1.3

No ability to add customised subplans quickly for new partners

Onboarding a partner with a rate structure we do not already hold requires a new subplan for each permutation of the rate-affecting attributes that partner needs. Exhibit B shows a single plan carrying nine subplans to cover two states and two program types across issuance and renewal.

Because an existing subplan cannot be edited once its plan is associated with a policy period, and because no subplan can be removed, each partner addition is permanent and additive. The configuration grows monotonically and cannot be reduced.

Fifteen of approximately forty-five plans, filtered to Current. The Expiration Date column is empty for every plan, consistent with GWMAIN-15665. Plan names encode their rates, which is the only way to establish what a plan pays without opening it.

Evidence

Exhibits A and B

Impact

Partner onboarding is gated on configuration work that cannot later be undone

Issue 1.4

No ability to change subplans for particular agencies at short notice

A rate change for a single agency cannot be made in isolation. Because rates are held on subplans within a plan, and plans are assigned at producer code level, changing one agency's rate means either creating a further subplan whose availability criteria isolate that agency, or moving the agency to a different plan.

The first compounds Issue 1.1 and Issue 1.3. The second requires the destination plan to already exist with the correct rates, allowed tiers, and subplan structure.

Neither route can be completed at short notice, and neither can be reversed cleanly if the commercial arrangement changes.

Impact

Commercial agreements agreed with an agency cannot be reflected in the system within the timeframe they were agreed to

Issue 1.5

Commission decisions made within 90 days of a renewal require manual cleanup

A renewal policy period is received by BillingCenter approximately 90 days before its effective date. At that moment two things are fixed together: the commission rate, through subplan selection, and the agent, through the producer of record on the reserve.

Any commission decision taken after that point therefore cannot be captured by configuration. A rate change must be applied by commission override on each affected period, and a broker of record change must be applied by transfer. Both are manual, both are per policy, and neither raises an error if it is not done.

The practical consequence is that every commission decision affecting a renewal must be entered 90 or more days before that renewal's effective date. Commercial negotiations, partner agreements, and broker of record requests do not observe that deadline, and requests cluster in the weeks immediately before renewal, which is the period the deadline excludes.

This is the common cause behind Issues 1.2, 1.4 and 2.2. The rate and the agent are locked by the same event, so a single change to when or how that lock is applied would address all of them.

Impact

A standing manual remediation workload proportional to renewal volume, and a silent failure mode where the remediation is not performed

Issue 2.1

Agents cannot be paid on premium earned and policy effective date together

This is Issue 1.2 seen from the transfer side. Where a broker of record change takes effect at a renewal, the incoming agency should earn commission as renewal premium is received, but not before the renewal has incepted.

Because the earning condition cannot combine both tests, renewal premium received before the effective date earns commission immediately, to whichever agency holds the producer code at that moment. No transfer type alters this. Point-in-time, retroactive, and future transfers all determine who owns the commission; none of them determines when it earns.

Impact

Commission is paid on a renewal term before it has incepted, to an agency that may not be the one servicing it once it does

Issue 2.2

Neither transfer option produces the right outcome inside the reserve window

A renewal policy period is received by BillingCenter approximately 90 days before its effective date, and the commission reserve is booked to the agency of record at that moment. A broker of record request arriving inside that window cannot be satisfied by configuration. Two transfer options are available and neither pays the correct agency for the correct term without cost.

Option	What it does	Consequence
Retroactive	Moves the renewal term's commission to the incoming agency, reaching back to the commission reserve date	Requires clawback of any commission already paid on premium earned after the reserve date and before the transfer request, in order to pay the incoming agency. The recovery is raised against an agency we are in the process of parting with
Future	Leaves the upcoming renewal with the outgoing agency and applies from the term after it	The incoming agency does not earn on the renewal they will actually service, and waits a further full term. Where premium was earned after the reserve date and before the transfer, that commission remains with the outgoing agency and the incoming agency is not paid on that term at all

Neither option pays the agency that will service the renewal, for the term they will service it, without either recovering money from the outgoing agency or deferring the incoming agency by a full policy term.

This arises routinely rather than exceptionally, because insureds shop at renewal and broker of record requests therefore cluster in the weeks before the renewal date, well inside the 90 day window. See also Issue 1.5, which describes the same lock applied to commission rates.

Impact

Either a receivable raised against a departing agency, with attendant collection risk and relationship cost, or an incoming agency servicing a term they earn nothing on

Issue 2.3

Submitting a transfer is manual and requires both systems

A single broker of record transfer requires a Policy Change in PolicyCenter to set the producer of service, and a separate transfer in BillingCenter to move the producer of record and the commission. Neither system performs the other's half, and neither raises an error if only one is completed.

The operator must also determine the transfer type before starting, by reading whether BillingCenter has received the renewal and whether the renewal has taken effect. That determination is derivable from the request date and the policy dates, but is currently made by hand.

Average time per transfer: 5 to 10 minutes.

Exhibit C, screen recording, to be attached

Impact

Volume-dependent operational cost, and a silent failure mode where the PolicyCenter half is completed and the BillingCenter half is not, discovered only when the incoming agency queries a commission statement

Issue 2.3.1

Transfer type cannot be varied by policy within a book roll

When an entire book is transferred, the correct transfer type depends on each policy's position relative to its own renewal effective date. Some policies in the book will sit before the commission reserve date, some inside the window, and some past their renewal.

The transfer wizard applies one commission option to the whole selection. Varying it by policy requires splitting the book into separate transfers and running each independently, determined policy by policy against its effective date.

The practical result is that a book roll is either performed as many small transfers, or performed as one transfer with a single option that is wrong for part of the book.

Impact

A book roll is either prohibitively slow or produces incorrect commission treatment on a subset of policies