I’m not sure we can talk about a trailing commission. A commission will be paid to the SM regardless of whether you renew with the same insurer or a different one, every year.
The origin of this commission was that the Strata Manager acted as an intermediary by facilitating the quoting and claims management. It allowed them to quote a lower “per lot” management fee to the scheme and appear more competitive, but it slowly became essential to their budgets. Most managing agreements stipulate that should insurance be sourced independently from the SM, the management fee will increase by an amount equivalent to the foregone insurance commission.
Since the new legislation, 3 quotes need to be sourced and most SMs rely on brokers to do the legwork for them. The broker charges a fee, but ALSO gets a commission from the insurer, that is then shared with the SM. The broker’s fee and SM commission have to be disclosed, but not the broker’s commission. The brokers usually only provide general advice which doesn’t require huge amounts of work and has limited value.