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Introduction to the Independent Insurance Agency

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Title : Introduction to the Independent Insurance Agency
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Introduction to the Independent Insurance Agency

Introduction to the Independent Insurance Agency

hey this is Jeremy from shine insurance and our article today is all about what is an independent insurance agent I get this question all the time because at shine insurance we are independent insurance agents and what is it and all these questions always come up so I thought I would just resolve that in a quick video right here and I thought the best way to describe what an independent insurance agent is is to talk about the three ways to get home auto or business insurance and therefore kind of show you what's available and what the different options are so the first one is to sign up online or call an 800 number simply going to your online spaces and getting insurance on your own the second is what's called captive agents and i'll describe that in a second and the third is an independent.
agent so let's start at the very beginning you can definitely go online or call an 800 number and get insurance all by yourself it's very easy it's very quick and you are on your own in doing so and more and more people are doing that more and more commercials are being shown for those kinds of companies so that certainly is one way to go about getting your insurance uh some examples of those are like liberty mutual or insurance or safe auto a lot of the ones you see in commercials a lot of the times are available online or through an 800 number the second is through what's called a captive insurance agents and these are folks that usually have a local branch of a large insurance company the term captive refers to the fact that those folks work for one specific company they work for the company therefore they are captive to that company they can't go out and look at other companies other options if you're calling them for insurance they're going to show you what is available with their insurance company some common examples of those are state farm allstate or farmers generally those folks have local spaces you can go to if you want to walk in the door of their agency 

shake hands which with an actual human you can do that as far as how they're paid because i get that question a lot how are different folks paid for the work they do agents of a captive agency are generally paid a salary right they work for the company they're paid a salary and then they get you know performance bonuses associated with uh how many folks they bring in the door so that brings us to independent agents and an independent agency is an agency that provides access to multiple insurance companies and advises about which one is best for you so independent agencies make relationships with multiple companies they go out to those companies and say hey you're a great company we would love to work with you would you like to work with us and then they do that with multiple different companies it could be two companies it could be five it could be 10 20 different agencies work with different amounts of companies but all independent agencies work with multiple companies and the companies 

have to know that going in that if they're working with independent agents there's going to be competitive in that agency in a captive agency there's no competition the people work for the company there are no other companies there is an independent agency there is competition amongst companies inside that agency because the agency has multiple companies that they're working with the company's independent agents work with are different than the captive companies I get the question all the time can you offer me state farmer Allstate or farmers and the answer is no I don't work with those companies because they've made a choice they have chosen to have their own agents in towns around the country instead of working with independent agencies so companies have to make a decision do they want to work with independent agents 

knowing that there will be competition in the agency or do they want to have their own captive agents in town and just have no competition in the agency as far as how independent agents are paid it's different as well generally speaking independent agents are paid a percentage of your insurance premium so if you decide to work with them you pay a thousand dollars for your insurance policy the insurance agency is going to get some cut of that premium and so in essence an independent insurance agent is free to you the number that is sent to you as the quote this is how much your auto insurance is going to cost this is how much your home insurance is going to cost that is the bottom line number you'll be paying but a little bit of that money comes back to the agency and that's how they make their money so i set up a graphic here just to break down you know four different parts obviously there's lots of different things to think about when you're thinking about which insurance company to work with but here's four examples and the difference between these three options let's start with speed you want to get a quote you need it right now you need it quick well 

you know the best option there is probably online or 800 number and the reason is it's very automated you're going to go online you're going to plug some information in they're going to pop a number out and if you like it you're just going to go for it and and so speed generally speaking is going to be better if you work with online or 800 numbers as far as local well you know captive agents and independent agents are generally there locally so there's an office you can walk into shake hands with your agent sit down and talk about your policies if that's what you want to do so as far as local goes captive and independent are your best options you're certainly not going to have that option if you're working with an online or 800 number company they're simply not local and you know that going in as far as quality and when i'm talking about quality what i'm trying to say is the quality of your insurance policy that it's been put together properly that it's going to have coverage for you when those bad things happen who's going to provide you with the best quality policies and the best quality companies well in general the the access point that has the most option is going to give you the best quality because those independent agents have multiple companies 

they can look at and so one of the things independent agents are constantly looking at is what's the quality of the policy that the companies are providing to me if a company doesn't have a good quality policy i can move on to another company i don't have to stick with that particular company and so i'm more likely as an independent agent to provide provide you with quality coverage in a quality company because i've got options all right the last one well let me just back up and say you know the one that's going to have the least amount of potential quality is that online or 800 number with a captive or an independent you have people who are looking at your policies and making decisions about what to offer you you're much more likely to see quality from an independent agent and even a captive agent than you are from an online or 800 number where they're really not paying any attention to what you're purchasing you're making all those decisions on your own without really any advice and so the chances of the quality being low are very high and that's one of the problems with uh going online or to an 800 number finally price now i'm going to come to a conclusion here in just a second but i should preface it by saying you know no one can say they have the best 

price price depends on so many different things at so many different moments in time when you decide to look for insurance that is a single moment in time any company may have the best price at that moment it doesn't mean that price is going to stay the same companies prices fluctuate year after year sometimes going up sometimes not as often as we'd like it to but sometimes going down in general though an independent agent is going to know the ebbs and flows of price in the marketplace and be able to offer you a company that is the strongest combination of price and quality at that given moment and then as time passes if that company's price gets worse or goes up or changes an independent agent is going to be able to say you know what you're with this company they've taken great care of you their prices is not as good as some other companies here's another one i can offer you've got a choice do you want to stick with that company that you trust and you know or do you want to switch over to this other company and work with them because their price is better and the great thing is you get to stay with the independent agent you don't lose your local personal relationship when you change from one company to another so in general and what i see when i'm up against independent agents 

when i'm looking at someone's policy that they already have and they're thinking about coming and working with shine is that if i'm up against an independent agent i have a harder time showing a much better price than if i'm up against captive agents because they're simply not offering you any other options but the single option they have so they're not going to tell you necessarily if their price is worse than everyone else i mean if they've got the worst price in town that's still the only company that they have to work with and so in general for those reasons independent agents tend to have better price okay so what is an independent insurance agency the reason you started watching this video it is access to multiple often exclusive insurance companies inside of one agency uh it works for you not the company so the agent is not working for any company the agent is choosing which companies to work with obviously they have a relationship with those companies but they don't work for the company and that works to your advantage if there's any issues along the way with the insurance company that you're placed with is motivated by quality and good advice there's a reason you go to an independent agent and it's to have an advisor you know you want access to great companies sure you want access to good policies 

absolutely but you also want access to good advice and in general you're going to get that in an independent agency in a way that you may not be able to get in a captive agency and you're certainly not going to get if you go online or go to an 800 number can you usually find the best price and coverage for reasons i already described and finally helps during claims most captive agents and certainly the 800 numbers or what have you are not going to be an advocate for you during claims in fact in fact most captive agents don't even get involved in the claims process so you if you have a local agent who helped you to put the policy in place and then you have a claim you're really going to be working directly with the company and that agent is not going to be able to help you out with independent agents that's different you'll still be working with the company certainly during a claim because the company is ultimately the person who is paying out the claim but if you need your local agent to help you if there's something going on in that claim that doesn't seem quite right or you need support that local agent should be able to help you out as a mediator as a person that comes between your perspective and the insurance company's perspective and it's one of my favorite things personally to do to really pull those two things together and take a bad situation potentially you know troublesome and help you understand exactly what's going on i tell my clients all the time i don't always have the information 

you want to hear but I have the information that will help you understand why things are the way they are and in claim situations that's so important to just be able to understand because so often claims are confusing and so an independent can agent can help you do that all right that was what is an independent insurance agent I hope that you understand things a little bit better about other shine videos we've got new home buyers to guide out there if you haven't gone to our channel and check that out if you're in the market for a house definitely first place you should go is this video and our new home buyers guide that you can download underneath the video to help you walk from beginning to end through the process of buying a new house auto insurance it explained if you ever just wanted to understand the details of your auto insurance policy whether you're in an at-fault state or a no-fault state check out our two videos on auto insurance 

explained and then finally if you just want funny we've got a video called how not to light a bonfire don't think i need to go too much deeper into that but go ahead and check that out and see someone behaving incredibly poorly and maybe laugh a little bit finally one last thing or really two last things we need you to do as always the last step in the video is to one subscribe to our youtube channel if you like the information you learned in this video we've got multiple videos that do exactly what i did here just as quickly and succinctly as possible explain some part of the insurance world and please go ahead and share this video with other folks in your social media world i always say good information is only great when it's shared with others if you learn something here if you feel like you know independent agents better than you did before go ahead and pop that out in your social media world and let other people experience as well okay well that's the end of this video hope you enjoyed it until the next time have a wonderful day



That's the article Introduction to the Independent Insurance Agency

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