How much money do insurance agents make an hour?

Answer 1

Typically, insurance agents are paid a commission based upon the premium for the policy sold. Therefore, there is no direct correlation between earnings and and an "hourly rate".

In some transactions it may take many visits with the client, and working with the insurance underwriter, to close the deal and get the policy issued--all of which may be very time consuming. In those cases, the hourly rate may effectively be very low. In other, "easy" cases, where selling the product is not hard and underwriting is not troublesome, not much time may be involved for the agent, so the commission, were it translated to an hourly rate, would be proportionately higher.

At best, one could take an average of earnings of all insurance agents to get a very broad idea of earnings. Even then, you would be best advised to narrow that further into the type of insurance being sold (life, health, auto, homeowners, etc.). In no event would this be an exact figure.

A bit more:

Their salary depends on several factors. Some agents are self employed, and make 12% - 15% comission on all policies sold, depending on the insurance company the policy is written with, at least with independent insurance agents.

An independent insurance agent is one who can write insurance policies with various insurance companies, while a captive agent is one who can write policies only through the insurance company under whom they have a franchise, such as State Farm, All State, etc.

When I was a licensed P&C (property and casualty, which is homeowner's and auto) agent in the mid 1980's the salaries were considerably less than they are now, so to give that pay scale would be irrelevant for today's pay scale. But the independent agents who own their agency definitely make more than the agents who work for another agent.