Florida Title Insurance Premium Split Calculator

How this calculator works

This calculator is the back-office sibling to the Florida Title Insurance Calculator. That one tells you what the title insurance premium IS on a Florida closing (computed against the OIR-promulgated rate schedule under F.S. § 627.7825 / F.A.C. 69O-186.003). This one tells you where those premium dollars GO — how the gross premium splits between the title agency and the title insurance underwriter, and how the agency's non-promulgated ancillary fees stack on top.

The split itself is invisible to the buyer. The buyer pays the gross premium on the Closing Disclosure regardless of how the dollars are subsequently allocated between agency and underwriter. The split is a back-office finance question: how does the title agency book its revenue, and what does it remit to the underwriter on its monthly remittance cycle?

Florida's promulgated-rate regime

Florida is one of the small handful of states where title insurance premiums are promulgated — set by regulation rather than competed on price. The promulgation framework lives in F.S. § 627.7711 (the empowering statute), F.A.C. 69O-186.003 (the current OIR-filed rate schedule), and F.S. § 627.780 (the anti-discount rule that backs the whole thing up).

The practical consequence is that a $500,000 owner's policy from any licensed Florida title underwriter — Old Republic, First American, Stewart, Fidelity National, or any of the smaller filers — costs exactly the same dollar amount. A Florida title agent who quotes a discount off the promulgated premium is committing an unfair-trade-practice violation that can result in license discipline.

What Florida title agents legitimately compete on:

• Ancillary fees: settlement, search, examination, municipal-lien search, wire. These are non-promulgated and set by the agency.
• Service level: turnaround, communication quality, attorney coordination, complex-transaction handling.
• Underwriter relationships: which underwriters will entertain hard-to-place files, what the agency's escrow comfort level is, how aggressively the agency will defend the file in claims.

The 70/30 base-premium split and 90/10 endorsement split are NOT regulated by statute — they're the longstanding Florida convention reflected in every underwriter's filed rate schedule. A small number of underwriters file alternative splits with OIR (e.g., 80/20 or 65/35 for specialty programs), but 70/30 is the canonical assumption that drives every Florida title-agency back office.

The 70/30 base premium split

The gross promulgated premium (owner's-policy premium plus lender's-policy premium, before any reissue credit) splits 70% agent / 30% underwriter under the canonical Florida convention. The agency retains 70% as its revenue for doing the search, examination, escrow, and closing work; the underwriter receives 30% as its compensation for taking the insurance risk and providing the claims-defense engine behind the policy.

This often surprises people who are new to title insurance. Most insurance lines run a far smaller commission to the producing agency — a property-and-casualty agent might receive 10–15% of premium. Title insurance is different because the title agent does the work that drives nearly all of the loss-prevention value. The underwriter is primarily a financial-strength backstop. The economics reflect the work allocation, not the risk allocation.

The 90/10 endorsement split

Most ALTA endorsements split 90% agent / 10% underwriter — the agency keeps an even larger share of endorsement premiums than of base premium. Common Florida endorsements:

• ALTA 9-06 (Restrictions, Encroachments, Minerals)
• ALTA 22-06 (Location)
• ALTA 25-06 (Same as Survey)
• ALTA 8.1-06 (Environmental Protection Lien)

A handful of more exotic endorsements rate differently under the underwriter's filed schedule (e.g., the ALTA 4.1-06 condominium endorsement sometimes runs 80/20). Pull your underwriter's filed endorsement schedule for the full table; this calculator assumes the 90/10 convention.

The rationale for the more agent-favorable endorsement split: endorsements typically require additional agency work (extended search, additional examination, additional indemnity language) but only modest additional underwriter risk, since the endorsement is bolted to a policy the underwriter has already accepted.

Ancillary fees are NOT promulgated

The agency's ancillary closing-side fees — settlement, search, examination, municipal-lien search, wire — are not part of the promulgated premium and are not subject to any agent/underwriter split. The agency retains 100% of these fees.

That doesn't mean the agency can charge whatever it wants. The CFPB scrutinizes these fees under the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule: they must be reasonable cost-recovery, not "what the market bears." A settlement fee wildly above the regional norm is an audit risk. A $200 wire fee against a $15 marginal cost is a documented enforcement target in CFPB public guidance.

Defensible Florida ancillary-fee ranges as of 2026:

• Settlement / closing fee: $500–$1,500 residential; commercial higher.
• Title search / exam fee: $200–$500.
• Municipal lien search: $100–$200 (mostly pass-through to a third-party vendor).
• Wire / disbursement fee: $25–$50 per outbound wire.

Why the municipal-lien search is a Florida-specific line

Florida case law — specifically the line of decisions following City of Palm Bay v. Wells Fargo Bank, 114 So. 3d 924 (Fla. 2013) — gives municipal code-enforcement liens, utility liens, and special-assessment liens priority over a subsequent purchaser, even when the purchaser had no record notice. These liens are frequently not recorded in the county official records, so the standard title search will not surface them.

The only way to find them is to query each municipality directly. Every Florida title agency runs a municipal-lien search on every residential closing — typically through a third-party aggregator that queries 400+ Florida municipalities in one batch. The fee on the closing block is largely a pass-through to that vendor, with a modest agency markup defensible under TRID's reasonable-cost-recovery standard.

Worked example: $400K Pinellas County residential purchase

• Owner's policy premium (promulgated, on $400,000): $2,025
• Lender's policy premium (simultaneous-issue flat rate, $320,000 loan): $25
• Gross premium: $2,050

Split:

• Agent's share (70% of $2,050): $1,435
• Underwriter's remit (30% of $2,050): $615

Ancillaries (all retained by the agency):

• Settlement fee: $750
• Search fee: $200
• Municipal lien search: $150
• Wire fee: $35
• Ancillary subtotal: $1,135

Total agency revenue: $2,570 ($1,435 premium share + $1,135 ancillaries).

Against $600 of allocated overhead per file, the effective agency margin is ($2,570 - $600) / ($2,050 + $1,135) = 61.9% of the dollars flowing through the title block. Note how the ancillaries dominate the agency's economics: 44% of agency revenue on this file comes from non-promulgated fees, not from the premium split.

Worked example: $1M commercial purchase with endorsements

• Gross premium (owner's + lender's at the promulgated tier rate): $4,825
• Endorsements (ALTA 9-06 + 22-06 + 25-06): $500

Split:

• Agent's premium share (70% of $4,825): $3,378
• Underwriter's premium share (30% of $4,825): $1,448
• Agent's endorsement share (90% of $500): $450
• Underwriter's endorsement share (10% of $500): $50

Ancillaries (commercial transaction — higher than residential):

• Settlement fee: $2,500
• Search & exam fee: $1,200
• Municipal lien search: $200
• Wire fee: $35
• Ancillary subtotal: $3,935

Total agency revenue: $7,762 ($3,378 + $450 + $3,935).

The endorsement split contributes $450 to agency revenue at the cost of $50 to the underwriter — a structurally different economics than the base premium split.

Rebates are mostly prohibited

F.S. § 626.572 — the Florida anti-rebate statute — generally prohibits an insurance producer from rebating any part of the premium back to the insured as an inducement. Narrow exceptions exist for the OIR-codified refinance/reissue credit mechanics (handled by the sibling Florida Title Insurance Calculator); a Florida title agent cannot rebate premium to the buyer outside those mechanics. The closer one comes to the anti-rebate line is in the ancillary-fee side: an agent CAN waive or discount a settlement fee, since that fee is not part of the premium and is not subject to the rebate prohibition.

In practice, the operational discipline is: never touch the premium line on the Closing Disclosure as a negotiating lever; if you want to make the closing more attractive to a buyer or referring agent, work the ancillary lines instead.

What this calculator does NOT do

• It does not compute the gross premium from the purchase price. For that, use the Florida Title Insurance Calculator (sibling).
• It does not validate that the input gross premium was correctly computed against the OIR rate schedule.
• It does not handle alternative split schedules filed by individual underwriters under specialty programs. The 70/30 base and 90/10 endorsement assumptions are the canonical Florida convention; pull your underwriter's filed schedule for any high-value file or specialty program.

Common errors

• Inverting the split: 70/30 in favor of the agent, not the underwriter. New agents sometimes flip this when reconciling their first remittance statement.
• Applying the split to ancillaries: The 70/30 and 90/10 splits apply only to premium dollars. Ancillary fees are 100% retained.
• Treating the rate as discountable: The promulgated premium itself is not discountable under F.S. § 627.780. Don't quote a "discount."
• Confusing the reissue credit with a discount: The reissue credit is an OIR-filed rate mechanic, not a discount. It lives in the gross-premium calculation, not in the split calculation.

Maintenance note

The Florida title insurance promulgated rate schedule under F.A.C. 69O-186.003 changes roughly annually as underwriters file revised rates with OIR. The structural split mechanics (70/30 base, 90/10 endorsements) are deeply embedded convention and have not materially changed in many years. This calculator reflects the rates and splits in effect as of the last-verified date in the configuration; if you are running a closing in a different rate period, confirm against the current OIR filing. The Florida Title Insurance Calculator (sibling) is updated against each OIR rate change.