What is a live transfer MVA lead?
A live transfer MVA lead is a motor vehicle accident claimant screened by a call centre and warm-transferred to your intake desk while still on the phone. You pay $80–$250 per qualified transfer rather than per record, contact rate is effectively 100% because the connection is the product, and signed-case rates run 8–14%. The trade-off is coverage: transfers only work during hours your phones are actually staffed.
The model is also sold as pay-per-call, warm transfer, or call-verified supply. The economics are the same in each case: you stop paying for records and start paying for connections, which removes speed-to-lead from the equation and replaces it with staffing.
Live transfers vs. exclusive web leads
Live transfers sit in the middle of a three-rung ladder: exclusive web leads below, and fully signed casesabove at $1,500–$20,000+ each. Price tracks how much qualification the vendor has already absorbed, so compare the three on cost per signed case rather than on unit price.
| Dimension | Exclusive web lead | Live transfer |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A contact record delivered to your CRM | A live person already on your phone line |
| Price | $585–$1,105 per lead | $80–$250 per qualified call |
| Contact rate | 75–90% with disciplined cadence | ~100% — the connection is the product |
| Signed-case rate | 10–15% | 8–14% |
| Coverage | 24/7 — leads queue for your cadence | Staffed hours only |
| Who screens | You, after delivery | The call centre, before transfer |
| Main failure mode | Slow speed-to-lead kills contact rate | Unanswered transfers you still pay for |
On cost per signed case the two land closer than the sticker prices suggest. At $175 per transfer and an 11% sign rate a case costs $1,590; at a $420 web lead and a 12% sign rate it costs $3,500. Transfers look decisively cheaper — until you count the calls you paid for outside staffed hours, the ones nobody answered, and the disputes you lost because no buffer was agreed. Those are not edge cases in this model; they are the model’s standard failure mode.
What a buffer is, and why it is the whole contract
The buffer is the number of seconds a live transfer must stay connected before it becomes billable — commonly 60 to 120. It is the single most negotiated term in a pay-per-call agreement, because a short buffer bills you for hang-ups and a long one lets genuinely qualified callers go unbilled. Agree the buffer, the qualification script, and the dispute window in writing before the first call routes.
A worked example: at a 60-second buffer, a claimant who realises within 40 seconds that they have already hired a lawyer costs you nothing. At a 30-second buffer, that same call bills at $175. Across 200 transfers a month, a 30-second difference in buffer is routinely a four-figure monthly swing — which is why it belongs in the agreement rather than in the pitch.
Six terms to agree before the first call routes
The seconds a call must stay connected before it bills — typically 60 to 120. Short buffers bill you for hang-ups; long ones let qualified callers slip through unbilled. Get the number in the agreement, not the sales call.
Ask for the exact script the call centre reads before transferring. If the vendor will not share it, you cannot know what 'qualified' means, and every dispute becomes a matter of opinion.
How many days you have to reject a transfer, and whether the vendor accepts recordings as evidence. Seven days is common; anything under 48 hours is unworkable for a firm that reviews weekly.
What happens when your line is busy or nobody picks up. Some vendors bill regardless. Agree that an unanswered transfer is never billable, and that repeated misses pause the campaign rather than burning budget.
Define the exact hours and time zones you accept transfers, and where overflow goes. Transfers arriving when nobody is staffed are the single largest source of waste in this model.
The maximum simultaneous transfers you can receive. Without a cap, a good campaign hour can deliver four calls to a one-person intake desk and you pay for three of them twice over.
When live transfers are the right buy
- You have staffed phones and cannot fix speed-to-lead. If web leads sit for 30 minutes before anyone dials, transfers remove the failure mode entirely.
- Your intake team converts well but dials badly. Some desks are excellent in conversation and poor at persistence. Transfers pay for exactly that shape.
- You are testing a market and want fast signal. A hundred transfers tell you what claimants in a state sound like far faster than a slow-burn web campaign.
And when they are not:
- Single-person intake. Concurrency will beat you. Two transfers arriving at once means paying for a call you never worked.
- Evening and weekend crash volume matters to you. Transfers only exist while your phones are staffed; web leads queue.
- You want case-type precision. Filtering is coarser on transfers — the screen happens on a phone call, not against structured qualification filters.
How we supply live inbound
Our default product is exclusive real-time web leads delivered by webhook. We also route warm-transfer calls for firms with staffed intake — the billing model, buffer terms, and qualified-call definition are on pay-per-call MVA leads. Bilingual transfers are available in Spanish-speaking markets.
For the full picture across supply models — shared, exclusive, transfer, aged, and pre-signed — see personal injury leads, or go straight to the buying guide.
Pricing figures on this page follow the methodology of the MVA Lead Cost Report 2026: ranges aggregated from our own campaign delivery data and buyer-reported intake outcomes, updated 2026-07-27. The full tables and the machine-readable dataset live in the report.