Bamboo Insurance · Project Management Office
SOP-BC-001 Commission Subplan Changes
| Document ID | SOP-BC-001 | Owner | Project Management Office |
| Version | 0.1 Draft | Author | PMO, Finance |
| Effective date | To be set on approval | Approver | Finance, IT, Sales Management |
| Review cycle | Each Guidewire upgrade | System | Guidewire BillingCenter, Palisades |
Purpose
This procedure governs how commission rates are changed in BillingCenter. It exists because BillingCenter selects a commission subplan once, when it receives a policy period, and never revisits that selection. A rate change made after the fact does not reach the policy periods it was intended for, and there is no error to signal it. This procedure sets the deadlines, the mechanism, and the correction path so that outcome does not occur unnoticed.
Scope
In scope: creating commission subplans; overriding a standing subplan with a dated one; ending or extending a dated subplan through IT; correcting the commission on policy periods rated under a superseded subplan; and reversing or writing off commission where a correction cannot be recovered. Applies to both new business and renewal business.
Out of scope: broker of record transfers and the commission consequences of changing agency of record, governed by SOP-BC-002; producer onboarding; commission payment scheduling; and agency bill commission, which is retained by the producer at source and is not affected by this procedure.
Definitions
| Commission plan | The container assigned to a producer code. Holds one or more subplans, and carries the producer tiers it is available to. A plan is available to a producer only if the producer's tier is among the plan's allowed tiers. Tiers sit on the plan, not on subplans. |
| Commission subplan | The rule that decides which rate applies and when commission earns. Selected once, when BillingCenter receives a policy period. |
| Availability criteria | The seven attributes a subplan can be matched on: product type, policy term, assigned risk, account business segment, account evaluation, jurisdiction, and underwriting company. None of them is a date. |
| Priority | The order in which subplans are evaluated, lowest number first. The first subplan whose criteria are true is used. |
| Commission Reserve Date | 90 days before a Renewal Effective Date. BillingCenter receives the renewal policy period and books the commission reserve at this point. |
| Commission override | A manual adjustment to the commission on a policy period. Applied at policy period, policy section, or charge level. Adjusts existing commission transactions, affecting both reserve and earned amounts. Policy period and section overrides affect the primary producer role only; charge level reaches all three roles and allows a flat amount as well as a rate. |
| Override Plan | The button on the policy's Commissions screen used to apply a policy period or section level override. Selecting Percentage sets a commission rate on the period. Bamboo does not use its Alternate Plan option. |
| Commission payment reversal | Undoing a commission payment already sent to a producer. Can reverse the payment together with its payable transactions, or the payment alone where the commission is to be transferred elsewhere. |
| Commission write-off | A transaction recording that commission the insurer had expensed will not now be paid. An approvable transaction governed by the Charge Commission Writeoff authority limit. |
| Inception to date | Cumulative position since the policy period began. The only basis on which a corrected period reconciles. |
Roles and Responsibilities
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Finance | Owns the rate decision and the target population. Approves acceptance criteria. Reconciles corrected periods on an inception to date basis. |
| Project Management Office | Calculates the configuration deadline under 6.1 or 6.2 and confirms it against the current renewal lead time. Tracks the change through to verification. |
| BillingCenter administrator | Creates the subplan and sets its priority. Holds the commplancreate and commplanedit permissions. |
| Agency relations | Serves producer notice where an existing rate is changing. Notice is a producer agreement obligation and is tracked outside BillingCenter. |
| IT | Sets or changes the Expiration Date on a subplan that already exists. This is not available through the Commission Plan screen and must be requested with lead time. |
| Finance operations | Executes commission overrides under 6.4 and confirms the adjustment on the following statement. |
To be confirmed. Role names above are placeholders pending confirmation of the correct owning teams and the approval chain for a rate change.
Governing Rules
The following are properties of BillingCenter, not policy choices. Every step in section 6 follows from them. The source column distinguishes behaviour documented in the Guidewire Application Guide from Bamboo configuration values and from positions proposed by this procedure.
Blocking item. subplan date fields are not documented in the Application Guide, so it is not known whether they are evaluated against the date BillingCenter receives the policy period or against the Policy Period Effective Date. If the latter, the deadlines at 6.1.2 and 6.2.2 are unnecessary and change request CR-01 is already satisfied. This procedure should not be approved until open item 10.1 is closed.
| Ref | Rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5.0a | Subplans exist only in BillingCenter. Rates, availability criteria, priority, earning events, and dates have no representation in PolicyCenter. A commission plan is offered as a choice when a producer code is created in PolicyCenter, and after that plan assignment is BillingCenter's to manage; PolicyCenter is not informed of later changes. | Application Guide |
| 5.1 | An existing subplan cannot be edited once its plan is associated with a policy period. Only the plan Expiration Date, producer tiers, new subplans, and subplan priority may be changed. A rate change is always a new subplan, never a percentage edit. | Application Guide |
| 5.2 | A subplan created after BillingCenter has received a policy period never applies to that period. There is no re-evaluation. This holds regardless of the dates carried on the subplan. | Application Guide |
| 5.3 | New business is received at bind. Renewals are received at the Commission Reserve Date, 90 days before the Effective Date. Deadlines differ accordingly. | Application Guide, plus Bamboo renewal lead time |
| 5.4 | Commission plan Effective Date and Expiration Date govern when a plan may be attached to a new producer code. They do not control which rate applies to a policy period. | Application Guide |
| 5.5 | Correcting a mis-rated period requires a Commission override on the charges. No subplan action will reach it. | Application Guide |
| 5.6 | A correction never reopens an issued statement. It appears as an adjustment on the next one, and a negative correction offsets against that agency's future commission. | Application Guide |
| 5.7 | Reconcile on Inception to date. Month to date will not tie in the month a correction lands. | Derived by PMO |
| 5.8 | subplans carry an Effective Date and an Expiration Date. A dated subplan placed above a standing one overrides it for the period it covers, and evaluation falls through to the standing subplan once it expires. Dates can be set when a subplan is created; changing them afterwards requires IT. | Bamboo configuration, undocumented in the Application Guide |
| 5.9 | Test sequences must match production sequences. Creating a subplan and then triggering a renewal passes a test that production would fail. | Proposed by PMO |
Procedure
New Business Rate Change
| Step | Responsible | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 6.1.1 | Finance | Define the target population and the date from which the new rate should apply. |
| 6.1.2 | PMO | Establish the bind deadline, not the effective deadline. Identify the earliest bind date for policies in the target effective month. The subplan must be live before that date. |
| 6.1.3 | Agency relations | Serve 60 days notice where an existing rate is changing. No notice is owed for a new subplan that nothing has been quoted under. Confirm against producer agreements. |
| 6.1.4 | BC administrator | Apply the change under 6.3. Where it depends on 6.3.C, add IT's turnaround to the deadline at 6.1.2. |
| 6.1.5 | PMO | Verify with a test bind before the deadline. Confirm the resolved rate on the charges, not the configuration screen. |
| 6.1.6 | Finance operations | Identify and correct any policy period already bound at the old rate under 6.4. |
Renewal Rate Change
Steps 6.2.1 to 6.2.6 cover a change made in time. Steps 6.2.7 to 6.2.10 cover a request that arrives after the Commission Reserve Date, where the reserve has already booked and an override is the only way to reach it.
| Step | Responsible | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 6.2.1 | Finance | Define the target renewal effective month and the new rate. |
| 6.2.2 | PMO | Work back from the earliest Commission Reserve Date in that month. Use the earliest date across the book, not the average, or part of the population will miss the change. |
| 6.2.3 | Agency relations | Serve 60 days notice. A new renewal subplan still changes what an agency expected to earn on a book they already hold, so treat it as a change rather than an addition. |
| 6.2.4 | BC administrator | Apply the change under 6.3, completed before that date. Where it depends on 6.3.C, add IT's turnaround to the deadline at 6.2.2. |
| 6.2.5 | PMO | Confirm by checking the reserve on the first renewal to book after the change. |
| 6.2.6 | PMO and Finance | Size the population that missed the change before the cutover, not after. Every renewal already reserved keeps the old rate. |
| 6.2.7 | PMO | Where the request arrives after the Commission Reserve Date but before the renewal effective date, the reserve has already booked at the old rate and the subplan change will not reach it. Route those periods to 6.2.8. |
| 6.2.8 | BillingCenter administrator | Apply a commission rate override at the new rate on each affected renewal period. The override adjusts every commission transaction on that period. A renewal period's commission begins at the Commission Reserve Date, so the override reaches back to that date and no further. No separate back-dating is required or possible. |
| 6.2.9 | BillingCenter administrator | Select the override level for the roles affected; see the level table at 6.4. A policy period override covers the primary role only, so use the charge level where the superseded subplan carried a secondary rate. |
| 6.2.10 | PMO | Complete the subplan change under 6.3 regardless. The override corrects periods already booked; the subplan is what makes every period received afterwards take the new rate without intervention. |
Applying the Change
Rates are changed by layering dated subplans over standing ones. The standing rate for a population sits low in the priority order. A subplan carrying a different rate for a bounded period is placed above it with an Effective Date and, where the change is temporary, an Expiration Date. While the dated subplan is in force it matches first. Once it expires it is skipped and evaluation falls through to the standing subplan beneath.
This is the pattern already in use. On plan "Bamboo All 12/12 Admitted 10/10 E&S" the 8 percent E&S subplans sit at priorities 3 and 4 with an Expiration Date, above the standing 10 percent subplans at 5 and 6. The plan name describes the standing rates; the dated subplans above them describe the exceptions.
| Ref | Type of change | How it is applied | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.3.A | Temporary rate period A rate that applies for a defined window, after which the standing rate resumes. |
Create a subplan above the standing one, with both an Effective Date and an Expiration Date set at creation. No further action is required at the end of the period; evaluation falls through automatically. | Business. Creating subplans on a live plan is permitted, and dates set at creation do not require IT. |
| 6.3.B | Permanent rate change A new standing rate replacing the current one. |
Create a subplan above the current standing one, with an Effective Date and no Expiration Date. The superseded subplan remains in the list but is never reached. | Business. No IT involvement, since nothing existing is modified. |
| 6.3.C | Ending or extending a rate already in place Changing when an existing subplan stops applying. |
Request IT to set or amend the Expiration Date on the existing subplan. This is not available through the Commission Plan screen. | IT, on request. Must be raised with enough lead time to land before the deadline at 6.1.2 or 6.2.2. |
Lead time. Where a change depends on 6.3.C, the IT request has to complete before the deadline calculated at 6.1.2 or 6.2.2, not before the target Effective Date. For renewals that deadline is already 90 days ahead of the effective month, so the request must be raised earlier still. Agree IT's standard turnaround and add it to the working-back calculation.
| Step | Responsible | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 6.3.1 | Finance and PMO | Determine whether the change is temporary, permanent, or an amendment to an existing dated subplan, and select 6.3.A, 6.3.B or 6.3.C accordingly. |
| 6.3.2 | PMO | Where 6.3.C applies, raise the IT request first and confirm it will complete before the deadline. Everything else in this procedure depends on it. |
| 6.3.3 | BC administrator | Create the subplan with its rate, earning event, commissionable items, availability criteria, and dates. Name it in the existing convention: rate, transaction type, program, for example "10 Renewal E&S". |
| 6.3.4 | BC administrator | Move it above the subplan it overrides using the Move Priority controls. The subplan beneath is unchanged and resumes when the new one expires. |
| 6.3.5 | BC administrator | Confirm the standing subplan beneath still carries the rate that should resume. Under 6.3.A the standing rate takes over on expiry, so it must be the intended one. |
| 6.3.6 | PMO | Record the change and its dates in the change log, including which subplan it overrides and what resumes on expiry. |
| 6.3.7 | PMO | Verify by inspecting the resolved rate on the first policy period received after the change takes effect, not by reading the configuration screen. |
Correcting the Commission on a Mis-Rated Period
The subplan on a rated period cannot be changed. Only the resulting commission can be overridden, and creating a subplan will not reach it.
| Step | Responsible | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 6.4.1 | PMO | Produce the affected population before correcting: policy periods effective on or after the target date whose commission booked before the correct subplan went live. Check each for an existing commission override first, since one can be specified in PolicyCenter when the policy or charge is created and would not have come from a subplan. |
| 6.4.2 | Finance operations | Apply a commission rate override at the level shown below. Overrides adjust existing commission transactions, affecting both reserve and earned amounts. |
| 6.4.3 | Finance and Finance operations | Expect the adjustment on the next statement; corrections do not reopen an issued one. Any overpayment offsets automatically against that agency's future commission, and where none is expected, escalate to 6.5. Reconcile on inception to date, allowing for a small movement in written-off commission as the override recalculates the remainder. |
| Override level | Where | Reach |
|---|---|---|
| Policy period | Commissions screen, Override Plan, select Percentage | All commissionable charges on the period. Primary producer role only |
| Policy section | Same screen, a rate entered per section | Primary producer role only |
| Charge | Charges screen, select the charge, Override Commission | All three producer roles, and a flat amount as well as a rate. Required where the superseded subplan carried a secondary rate |
A partially frozen policy period cannot be overridden at policy period or section level, because the override affects all invoice items including frozen ones.
Where an Override Is Not Sufficient
A rate override leaves any resulting overpayment to offset against the agency's future commission. That assumes there will be future commission. Where the agency is leaving, has been terminated, or has no further business with us, the offset never clears and one of the following applies.
| Step | Responsible | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 6.5.1 | Finance | Establish whether the overpayment will clear against future commission. If it will, the override under 6.4 is complete and no further action is needed. |
| 6.5.2 | Finance operations | Reverse the commission payment where a specific payment is to be undone rather than offset over time. Producer, Transactions, Payments tab, Reverse. Select Payment Sent and Associated Commission Payables where the commission is not going to another producer; the money returns to the policy's charge commission T-account. Select Payment Sent Only where the commission will be transferred to another producer under SOP-BC-002. A reason is required but carries no functional effect. Reversals execute immediately and do not require approval. |
| 6.5.3 | Finance operations | Write off the commission where it will not be recovered at all. Producer, Actions, Commission Write-off, select the policy, select the charges, enter the amount to write off, then Reduce Commission Payable. The wizard can be started from any producer and can write off commission on any policy. Write-offs are approvable transactions governed by the Charge Commission Writeoff authority limit. |
| 6.5.4 | Finance | Record which route was used and why. Write-offs are visible on the producer Write-Offs screen and can be reversed from there if the position changes. |
Controls and Verification
The scenarios below are the acceptance criteria for this procedure. Two do not pass as written and one describes a feature that does not exist. The governing rules in section 5 explain each case.
| Ref | Sequence under test | Acceptance criteria | Result | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F-NB1 | Create subplan, issue policy effective after it, take a payment | New policy uses the new subplan rate | Passes | The subplan exists when the policy binds, so it is evaluated and selected. Note the reason is the bind date, not the Effective Date. A policy bound before the subplan existed would fail this even with a later Effective Date. |
| F-NB2 | Create policy, take a payment, then create a subplan effective before the policy Effective Date | Reserves and paids tie to the new subplan rate | Fails | Selection already happened at bind. A subplan created afterwards is never evaluated for that period, and there is no Effective Date on a subplan to back-date against. Reaching this outcome requires a commission override on the charges, which is scenario F-OT1. |
| F-NB3 | Expire an old subplan so it cannot be used accidentally | Old subplan is not selected | No feature | subplans have no Expiration Date. The outcome is reachable by priority instead: place the replacement at a lower priority number so it is evaluated first and always matches, leaving the old subplan in place but unreachable. See the SOP below. |
| F-RN1 | Create subplan, renew a policy effective after it, take a payment | Renewal commission is at the new subplan rate | Passes in test only | It passes because the test creates the renewal after the subplan. Production runs the other way: a renewal effective after the subplan date was very likely received at its Commission Reserve Date, 90 days earlier, before the subplan existed. This test will validate behaviour that does not hold in the field. |
| F-RN2 | Renew 60 to 90 days ahead, take a payment, then create a subplan effective before the Renewal Effective Date | Reserves and paids tie to the created subplan | Fails | Same cause as F-NB2. The renewal period was received and the subplan resolved at the reserve date. Requires a commission override. |
| F-OT1 | Wrong subplan, process commission, run corrective script, same calendar month | Sum for the month matches the corrected subplan | Passes | This is the realistic pattern and should be the model for F-NB2 and F-RN2. Commission overrides adjust existing transactions, affecting both reserve and earned amounts. Within one month the correction nets before any statement issues. |
| F-OT2 | Wrong subplan in month one, corrective script in month two | Inception to date matches the subplan | Passes on ITD | The month one statement has already issued at the wrong amount and does not change. The correction appears as an adjustment line on the month two statement. If the correction is negative and commission was already paid, it offsets against that agency's future commission automatically. Reconcile on inception to date, never month to date. |
Known Limitations
| 8.0a | The subplan on a rated period cannot be changed. Only the resulting commission can be overridden. The period will always show the subplan it was originally rated under, so configuration and outcome will differ on any corrected period. |
| 8.1 | Subplans cannot be date bounded. Plans carry effective and expiration dates, but those only control when a plan may be attached to a new producer code. subplans have no dates at all, so a cutover is a person creating a subplan at the right moment, which can be late, early, or missed. |
| 8.2 | Selection keys on receipt, not Effective Date. Even a correctly timed change lands by receipt date. For renewals that is 90 days of slippage, and the lead time varies across the book. |
| 8.3 | Changing an existing subplan requires IT. Business can create subplans and set their dates at creation, but cannot amend the dates afterwards through the Commission Plan screen. Any change that depends on amending an existing subplan carries IT lead time and must be planned around it. |
| 8.4 | No notice mechanism. The 60 day notice period is a producer agreement obligation, not a system feature. BillingCenter applies a new subplan the moment it is saved. |
Change Requests
System changes arising from this procedure. These are requests against Guidewire or against our own configuration, not procedure steps, and they are tracked to their own lifecycle rather than through revisions of this document. Change requests arising from broker of record transfers are held in SOP-BC-002.
CR-01 · Internal · To be submitted
Allow business to expire subplans without an IT request
Setting or amending an expiration date on an existing subplan is not available through the Commission Plan screen and currently requires IT. Dates set when a subplan is created do not. The effect is that clause 6.3.C carries IT lead time, which has to be added to the deadlines at 6.1.2 and 6.2.2 and pushes a renewal rate change further than 90 days ahead of the effective month.
For discussion. Whether the restriction is a deliberate control or a side effect of how the screen is configured. The Application Guide states that no part of an existing subplan may be modified once its plan is associated with a policy period, so the block may be protecting against rate, commissionable item, or earning event changes on already rated periods. An expiration date changes none of those; it only alters when a subplan stops being reached.
If the control is deliberate, the alternative is to keep it with IT and agree a standard turnaround. If it is incidental, exposing the date fields to a restricted business role would remove the lead time from every rate change.
- Raised by
- PMO, Finance
- Decision needed
- Finance, IT
- Affects
- Clause 6.3.C, deadlines at 6.1.2 and 6.2.2
CR-03 · Guidewire · Delivered 7 June 2026
Calculate commission rates from the policy period effective date
Calculate commission rates based on the commission plan that is effective at the time of the policy period effective date.
Delivering this requires effective and expiration dating on subplans, and plan selection evaluated against the policy period effective date rather than the date BillingCenter receives the policy period. It would close 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3, and remove the need for 6.4 on planned rate changes.
Delivered 7 June 2026. Subplans now carry Effective Date and Expiration Date fields, which are not present in the Application Guide. What has not yet been confirmed is whether those dates are evaluated against the policy period effective date, as requested, or against the date BillingCenter receives the policy period. Open item 10.1 settles it.
If evaluated against the policy period effective date, the deadlines at 6.1.2 and 6.2.2 are unnecessary, rules 5.2 and 5.3 no longer hold, limitations 8.1 and 8.2 are closed, and the late-request branch at 6.2.7 to 6.2.10 becomes redundant. This procedure would need substantial revision.
To specify with Guidewire. Whether the plan is resolved once at receipt looking forward to the effective date, or whether existing periods are re-evaluated when the plan set changes. The second is what control scenarios F-NB2 and F-RN2 assume. Without it, those cases still require commission overrides.
Why it cannot be built locally. The Application Guide documents no plugin or extension point for commission plan or subplan selection. Building this ourselves would mean extending the entity and overriding core commission logic, which we would then carry through every upgrade.
- Raised by
- PMO, Finance
- Deployed
- 7 June 2026
- Verification
- Open item 10.1, outstanding
- Would close
- Limitations 8.1 and 8.2
Open Items
| 10.1 | Confirm what the 7 June 2026 deployment under CR-03 actually changed. Subplans now carry Effective Date and Expiration Date fields that are absent from the Application Guide. Establish whether they are evaluated against the policy period effective date, as CR-03 requested, or against the date BillingCenter receives the policy period. Test by identifying a renewal received before an expiry date with an effective date after it, and inspecting which rate its charges carry. If the former, sections 5.0 and 6.0 require substantial revision and several limitations close. |
| 10.1a | Agree IT's standard turnaround for setting or amending a subplan Expiration Date, and confirm that dates set at creation do not require IT. Both feed the deadline calculations at 6.1.2 and 6.2.2. |
| 10.1b | What happens to producers already assigned to a plan once the plan Expiration Date passes? Existing assignments presumably continue, but confirm before relying on plan expiry for anything. |
| 10.2 | Do producer agreements require notice for a genuinely new subplan? Our position is no for new business. For renewals it is weaker, because a new subplan changes what an agency expected on a book they already hold. |
| 10.3 | What is the earliest bind lead time in the new business book? Step 6.1.2 depends on it. |
| 10.4 | Confirm the owning teams and approval chain in section 4.0. |
| 10.5 | Agree the plan naming convention required by 6.3, and decide what to do about plans already named after their rates. Existing plans cannot be renamed, so they will carry inaccurate names for as long as they remain in use. |
| 10.6 | Confirm that E&S business has fallen through to the 10 percent subplans since the 8 percent subplans expired on 1 August 2026, and that no policy period received after that date is still rating at 8 percent. |
| 10.7 | Quantify the population affected by the rate change made on 7 June 2026, which under 5.3 will have missed renewals effective before approximately 5 September 2026. |
Related Documents
| SOP-BC-002 | Broker of record transfers. Governs transfer routing and the commission consequences of changing agency of record, and holds the change requests arising from it. |
| Producer transfers and commission rates | Background analysis behind SOP-BC-002. |
| Guidewire discussion document | Transfer reach, future transfer behaviour, and the questions raised with Guidewire. |
| BillingCenter Application Guide | Guidewire Palisades. Source for behaviour marked Application Guide in section 5.0. |
Revision History
| Version | Date | Author | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 Draft | 12 August 2026 | PMO, Finance | Initial draft. Scenarios and acceptance criteria supplied by Finance. Behaviour verified against the BillingCenter Application Guide, Palisades. |