September Commission Recovery Plan
The owners of New Brooke Ltd. are proud of all of the agencies that have built and grown the Brooke business to its past success’s. We would like to share a little of the New Brooke observations with you and bring much needed clarity to many of the events that have unfolded. We know you are great business men and women that can make good decisions with good information. We would like to give you that information.
We would like to start out by explaining that much of the information below will be described as Brooke or New Brooke.
New Brooke’s first day of business will commence on the day after the Bankruptcy Judge approve’s the sale. We expect that date will be late November or early December.
The Special Master has favored us with the opportunity to help guide, consult, and formulate policies in the interim to help make Brooke have the smoothest transition to New Brooke.
In our due diligence, the previous problems with Brooke are complex with the NASDAQ, SEC, Lenders, and upper management with an attempt to grow with some agencies that were not fundamentally sound.
We have found that the processing center that allows you to connect with many different carriers is fundamentally sound in its system and people. It does a great job in tracking monies, documents, commissions and provides many reports that allow the agencies to perform their job much easier.
Unfortunately, you and your commissions were accidentally compromised in September during a complicated transition from old management being removed and a special team
appointed by the courts to help run the business and many banks attempting to recover money that was past due. Our observations conclude that this team absolutely is trying to do the best thing for everybody which is an impossible task.
We have a plan to help restore those lost commissions and restore a business plan that will have even more opportunity for you in the future.
If you have a loan with a bank that was financed through Brooke, we would encourage you to contact that lender and renegotiate the terms. Our experience is that they would very much like to help.
New Brooke is going to eliminate the contingent liabilities going forward and we will not be paying utilities or loans for agencies.
New Brooke is going to eliminate the initial franchise fees going forward and the Aleritas financing relationships will no longer be deducted from the commissions.
New Brooke has a plan to share contingent commissions (cc) going forward with their agents based upon criteria.
You may have the opportunity to receive the missing September commissions twice. We would like to share on May 1 of 2009, 1/3 of the prorated Brooke CC based upon the following criteria.
1. You maintain at least a 70% level of commissions for January, February, and March of 2009 that you had in 2008.
2. The CC will be calculated on all company commission schedules for the year of 2008 and prorated according to your percentage of total commissions for 2008.
3. The September Commissions can be applied for in the bankruptcy court but we are unsure on how much may be returned at this time.
4. We would like to apply 2/3 of the CC toward your prorated commissions that were inadvertently not paid in September. We estimate that you would receive nearly half of the September payment that is outstanding in May 1 of 2009 and the remaining half in 2010.
5. New Brooke strongly believes in win-win situations and we are sorry for some of the mistakes in the past by previous owners. We hope that you will give us the opportunity to restore the relationship that you would expect.