How an Insurance Company Cut Missed Premium Payments by 60%
Recurring ACH billing with automated retries kept policies active, premiums on time, and the billing team out of spreadsheets.
Overview
For a regional insurance company, a missed premium payment is never just a missed payment — it starts a lapse clock. Policies terminate, coverage gaps expose customers, and reinstatement paperwork consumes agent time. This carrier was collecting premiums through mailed invoices and one-off card payments, and the numbers showed it: a persistent slice of policyholders missed payments every cycle, and the billing team spent days each month on manual follow-up and rebilling.
The company partnered with Sterling Ridge to rebuild premium collection around recurring bank payments. The goal was blunt: make the on-time payment the default outcome, and make every failure recover itself automatically before a human — or a lapse notice — got involved.
Within two quarters, missed payments had fallen by 60%, nearly two-thirds of policyholders were enrolled in recurring billing, and the billing operation had shrunk from a monthly fire drill to an exception-handling task.
What was holding
the business back
Premiums collected by mailed invoice and one-off payments
Every payment depended on the policyholder remembering to act — and a meaningful share didn't, every single cycle
Missed payments triggered policy lapses
Coverage gaps for customers, reinstatement workload for agents, and preventable churn for the carrier
Manual dunning and rebilling
The billing team lost days per month chasing failed payments across spreadsheets and phone calls
Card-on-file billing kept failing silently
Expired and reissued cards produced failures that looked like customer decisions but were purely mechanical
What we set up
with Sterling Ridge
Recurring ACH billing
Policyholders enroll once with a Plaid-verified bank account; premiums debit automatically on the policy schedule — monthly, quarterly, or annual.
Automated retry logic
Failed debits re-attempt on an optimized schedule aligned to common payday patterns, recovering most failures without any human involvement.
Proactive notifications
Policyholders get a reminder before each debit and an instant alert on failure with a one-tap path to fix their payment method — before the lapse clock starts.
Branded checkout and enrollment
A carrier-branded payment portal made enrollment feel like part of the policy experience, not a third-party detour — driving adoption past 65% of the book.
The numbers,
after Sterling Ridge
Reduction in missed premium payments across the enrolled book of business
Of policyholders enrolled in recurring bank-account billing within two quarters
Improvement in on-time payment rates on previously delinquent segments
Reduction in staff time spent on rebilling, dunning, and payment follow-up
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