Question 1

Do mortgage protection producers earn residuals on Hearthmark?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every policy bound through Hearthmark stays assigned to the originating producer. Year-1 commission is paid at the carrier's standard first-year rate, and the renewal chase queue activates automatically in year two and year three — Hearthmark's post-binding engine tracks payoff schedules, beneficiary updates, and lapse risk on your behalf so the residual reaches you without you managing a renewal pipeline. The assignment is yours; Hearthmark handles the operational back-end. You are never on a captive split where the agency captures the renewal and pays you a reduced back-end percentage.

Question 2

Am I a 1099 or W-2 producer on Hearthmark?

Accepted Answer

You are a 1099 independent contractor. Hearthmark issues no W-2, imposes no non-compete, and holds no captive agreement over your carrier appointments. You own every carrier contract you bring to the platform, and you own every policy you bind. Your income is commission-based and reported on Form 1099-NEC at year-end. Because you are independent, you are also free to write business off the platform — Hearthmark is your AI front office and post-binding operations layer, not your employer.

Question 3

How does state licensing compliance work compared to a captive agency?

Accepted Answer

At a captive agency the compliance burden falls on you — you self-certify that a lead is in a state where you hold an active appointment before every conversation. On Hearthmark the AI qualification layer runs a TCPA consent check and a state-license filter against your active appointments before any qualifying dialogue begins. If the lead's state is one where you are not yet licensed, the AI holds the conversation at a pre-consent stage and flags the appointment for review rather than routing it to you for a call you cannot legally close. You never inherit a non-consented appointment. This does not replace your obligation to hold the appropriate state license — it stops the pipeline from routing you into a compliance exposure.

Question 4

Which carriers can I contract with as an independent producer on Hearthmark?

Accepted Answer

Hearthmark is carrier-agnostic. The platform currently pre-quotes against Americo, Corebridge Financial (formerly AIG Life and Retirement), Transamerica, Banner Life, and Mutual of Omaha — the five carriers that cover the widest range of mortgage-balance face amounts and simplified-issue health questions. You bring your own carrier contracts; Hearthmark does not own them or take a captive-office override. If you hold appointments with carriers outside that list, you can still close that business off-platform — nothing in the Hearthmark agreement restricts your outside carrier relationships.

Question 5

How does the AI qualifier handle leads that come in after hours?

Accepted Answer

The AI qualifier responds within seconds of a lead submission regardless of time of day or day of week. For after-hours leads it opens a qualifying dialogue, collects the mortgage balance, health snapshot, and coverage intent, and then holds the conversation with a soft-drip sequence rather than pushing for an immediate live transfer. Once the producer's next available calendar slot opens, the AI books a live-transfer appointment and sends the lead a confirmation. No lead sits uncontacted because a producer was unavailable — the AI bridges the gap and hands off a warm, pre-qualified prospect at the scheduled time.

Question 6

How does the handoff from AI qualification to a licensed advisor work?

Accepted Answer

When the AI qualification score crosses the intent threshold — mortgage balance confirmed, health questions cleared, coverage need established — it triggers a live-transfer appointment booked directly against the advisor's calendar. The advisor on that call is the advisor who closes the policy; there is no separate call-center layer or warm-transfer middleman between the AI and the licensed closer. The AI surfaces a pre-populated quote brief to the advisor before the call begins so the advisor enters the conversation with the carrier comparison already prepared, not cold.

Question 7

Who owns the lead and the policy once it moves through the Hearthmark pipeline?

Accepted Answer

The producer is the named policy owner from the moment the application is submitted. Hearthmark never takes an ownership stake in the policy. Post-binding, Hearthmark operates the renewal chase, beneficiary update workflow, and payoff-recalculation queue on behalf of the producer — servicing the back-end so the producer does not need a service team — but legal ownership of the policy and the carrier relationship stays with the producer throughout the policy lifecycle.

Question 8

What does the Hearthmark subscription actually replace compared to a captive office?

Accepted Answer

A captive office bundles carrier-office rent or desk fees, a field manager or agency trainer salary, mandatory marketing co-op spend, and a proprietary dialer or CRM stack into the cost of doing business — costs that come out of your override or commission before you see them. The Hearthmark subscription ($199/mo Solo, $399/mo Practice, $799/mo Team) is the only fixed line item: it replaces all four of those cost centers with an AI front office, a post-binding operations layer, and a calendar-integrated live-transfer workflow. There are no hidden desk fees, no mandatory marketing minimums, and no vendor dialer contract — just the subscription and your carrier appointments.

Dimension	W-2 / captive agency	Independent producer on Hearthmark
Cost overhead	Carrier-office rent, manager salary, marketing co-op, and the mandatory vendor stack — all deducted off the top of every policy you write.	Per-tier subscription of $199–$799/mo depending on Solo / Practice / Team. No office, no manager salary, no co-op — subscription is your only fixed overhead.
Lead response time	IVR / shared lead-pile. Same-day to next-day response. After-hours leads cool while the carrier call center is the only thing answering.	AI qualifier responds in seconds. Live-transfer slot booked inside one business day — appointments are held against your own calendar, not a queue.
AI front office coverage	A vendor-scripted dialer, or nothing at all. After-hours calls forward to the carrier call center who has never met your applicant.	TCPA + state-license filter, intent scoring, and an after-hours drip. Your evenings stay yours; the AI holds the lead until a Hearthmark advisor is on the line.
Renewal follow-up	Anniversary mailers come from corporate. The producer rarely sees the renewal file — and almost never sees the beneficiary / mortgage-balance recalculation.	Year-1 → year-3 chase queue lives on your producer dashboard. Beneficiary updates and mortgage-balance recalc reminders get pushed to you, not to a call center.
Producer take-home	50–65% of premium after splits, overrides, and office overhead are skimmed off before you see a check. The captive agency keeps the back-end residual.	Full premium minus your tier subscription. You own the assignment, you own the residual — and the renewal chase queue hands the year-three dollars back to you.

Skip the AI voice agent. Keep the licensed human close.

The handoff that does not lose the lead between AI qualification and the licensed close.

Four steps from this page to a bound policy. None of them let the lead drop out of the pipeline.

One business day to a side-by-side quote. No demo theatre.

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Why an independent producer on Hearthmark outworks a captive W-2 desk.

Three producers on what changes once their after-hours volume stops cooling overnight.

Common questions before the first conversation.