The State of the Unworked Book
Unworked premium is the annual premium an insurance agency could write, or is at risk of losing, inside the book it already has: cross-sells never offered, coverage gaps never closed, renewals about to walk. In one recent 1,794-policy independent agency book, it totaled $2,016,738 per year.
Every agency owner suspects there is money sitting in the book. Almost nobody knows how much. This report exists to put a number on it, using real scans of real books of business, and to keep updating that number as the dataset grows.
What "unworked premium" means
Unworked premium is the annual premium inside an existing book of business that the agency could write or is actively at risk of losing, but that nobody is currently working. It comes in three forms:
- Monoline households. Clients who hold one policy with you and buy the rest of their insurance somewhere else. The home client who was never offered auto. The auto client with no umbrella.
- Coverage gaps. Policies where the client is plainly underinsured or missing an obvious companion coverage, and no one has raised it since the policy was written.
- Renewal risk. Premium on policies renewing in the next 60 to 90 days where no outreach has happened. This is the money most likely to walk out the door first.
None of this is speculative pipeline. It is premium attached to clients who already chose you, already trust you, and in most cases were simply never asked.
Inside one real book
Here is what a Book X-Ray found in a recent scan of a 1,794-policy independent agency book. Names removed, numbers real.
Breaking that total down:
- $1,274,607 in new premium opportunity across 740 households, led by 637 monoline households that hold one line with the agency and could reasonably hold two or more.
- $742,131 in premium at risk across 152 households with policies renewing inside the next 60 to 90 days and no outreach on record.
- 110 households with a clear coverage gap that has never been raised with the client.
Spread across the whole book, that works out to roughly $1,124 of unworked premium per policy in force, per year. The agency did nothing wrong to end up here. This is what a healthy, busy book looks like when the team is heads-down servicing and nobody has the hours to mine it.
How the numbers are produced
Each figure in this report comes from a Book X-Ray: a scan of an agency's actual client list, exported as a CSV from whatever AMS the agency runs. The scan groups policies into households, flags monoline households, coverage gaps, and near-term renewals with no outreach, and prices each opportunity using the premium data in the book itself. Nothing is projected from industry averages. If a number appears here, it was found in a real book.
A note on sample size: this is the inaugural edition of an ongoing report. The dataset grows with every book scanned, and we will update these benchmarks as it does. Every X-Ray is free, so the fastest way to see how your book compares is to run your own.
Why it goes unworked
Not because agents don't know cross-selling matters. Because working a book is a volume problem wearing a relationship costume. Touching 744 households means hundreds of calls, texts, and follow-ups, executed consistently, forever, while the phone keeps ringing and renewals keep stacking up. Most agencies solve for the day in front of them. The book quietly compounds behind them, in both directions.
See your own number
The whole point of measuring unworked premium is that it stops being abstract the moment it has your book's name on it. Upload your book, and within 48 hours you get your full report with real dollar amounts and a video walking you through where the money is. Free, self serve, no call required.
Published August 2026 by Darren Burch, founder of Mach 5 and owner of Burch Insurance Group. Updated as new books are scanned. When citing figures from this report, please credit Mach 5 (mach5agent.com).