What Most Irks Independent Agents With Their Carriers

User Comments

1. Jacob Fellers

   May 6, 2009 at 11:09 am

   Great topic. Great interview. Carriers need to more and more be mindful of the retail agent and see them more as an important asset and less as an irritation.

2. Bruce Finley

   May 13, 2009 at 8:09 am

   I have to strongly agree with the comment above by Jacob Fellers, we are an asset. I am an owner/partner in our agency with my twin brother and we have been in the business for 30 years. I personally started on the employee benefits side and stayed with it and been very successful. My brother Brent and Joyce have always handled the P/C and over the years we had GREAT relationships with our regional carriers and had companies coming to us for us to write business with them. They were always hands on and very helpful in trying to write business and been very successful. Now all I hear about in the office discussions is the big insurance companies buying the regionals, demanding more volume, not wanting the smaller agencies because it seems all they want is the bigger agencies, rolling blocks of business, underwriters that are so young and nieve they don’t even know what a floor furnace is and yet they think they know everything. What happened to the personal approach and contracting with the smaller agencies in smaller cities. The mentality seems to be somewhat driven by the thinking of the BIG cities trying to filrate the same approach and thought process for smaller cities, doesn’t work. Let’s think outside the box and be real here, small business, which is 80% of the make up of business, is what America is built on. Using another analogy of FACT, is that in the benefits side, proven time after time, 80% of a groups health claims is driven by 20% of the groups population. So why doesn’t the insurance companies go back to the basics and contract with multiple smaller agencies. They will still get the same amount of premium volume, just utilizing more smaller agencies and keeping the playing field even or are they trying to be another Walmart and put small business out of buiness. “People do business with people and it’s all biult on relationships”.

   What are your thoughts???

3. Matt Call

   November 15, 2009 at 11:22 am

   Thank you for this well written post. But I had difficult time navigating past your site as I kept getting 502 bad gateway error. Just thought to let you know.