Insurance Billing 101

The insurance market is huge and growing. But when it comes to collecting those payments, insurance is a lot more complicated than most goods or services. We’ll take a look at the factors that go into calculating an insurance bill, and what options companies have for billing methods.

What Makes Insurance Billing Complicated?

The reason why insurance billing is so complicated can be boiled down to one thing: state-by-state differences. Since every state makes its own rules for insurance, the requirements to stay compliant can vary significantly. Businesses that sell insurance in multiple states need to pay close attention to each state’s rules.

Here are 5 things that can make billing for insurance complicated:

1. Taxes and fees 

Every state imposes its own taxes and fees, sometimes with different guidelines for how they should be collected. This means that if you sell insurance in fifty states, you need to stay up to date with fifty sets of rules for when and how to add taxes to your customer’s bill. 

Different insurance products can also have their own rules, depending on both the type of product and its regulatory status. Admitted products, which are products that have met regulations set by the state’s Department of Insurance, have most (but not all) taxes and fees included in the premium. For non-admitted products, however, taxes and fees are billed separately. 

Taxes and fees can cause complexity for more than just the policyholder’s bill. Some are commissioned on, meaning that they’re included in the amount calculated for an insurance seller’s commission, and others are not. This is yet another set of rules an insurance organization needs to track in their billing.