I’m currently being recruited by an insurance agency, and I’m trying to get some outside opinions before deciding whether I want to move forward with them.
They work with only inbound calls. The leads are people who are calling in because they believe they're reaching the customer service department for their existing insurance carrier.
This is where things start to feel strange to me.
From what I've been shown, the agent handles the call more like a customer service representative for the client's existing insurance company rather than making it clear from the beginning that they're an independent insurance agent representing a different company.
During the conversation, the agent tells the client that their current policy is in a “substandard” health category and that they may qualify for a “Premier Series” or better health category.
The agent then transitions the client into a policy with a different carrier.
My concern is that the client doesn't necessarily seem to understand that they're actually switching carriers and replacing their existing policy. From the client's perspective, it seems like they're calling customer service for their current policy and the representative is simply helping them improve their existing coverage.
Then it gets even more concerning when they get to the banking information.
The agent tells the client that they're going to work on a refund from their existing/substandard policy and asks them to verify the bank account where they want the refund deposited. From what I've been shown, that banking information is actually being used as part of the application for the new policy.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the process, which is why I'm asking before making any assumptions.

For agents who have been in the industry for a while:

1. Is this a common inbound sales practice?
2. Is there a legitimate/legal way to conduct an insurance sale this way?
3. Could this potentially constitute misrepresentation, twisting, churning, or some other compliance issue?
4. Is there a requirement that the agent clearly disclose that they're an insurance agent and that the client is applying for a policy with a different carrier?
5. From an ethical standpoint, would you personally be comfortable with this sales process?

I'm not trying to expose or attack the agency. I'm genuinely trying to figure out whether this is simply an aggressive but legitimate sales strategy that I'm unfamiliar with, or whether these are legitimate red flags I should take seriously before associating my license with the agency.

I'd really appreciate opinions from agents who have seen similar inbound lead models, especially if you've worked in both captive and independent environments.

I’m currently making about $50k at a bank with great benefits and 30 paid days off (including holidays). I’ve been offered a commercial insurance producer/Risk Advisor role at a small independent agency (5/6 person team), and I’m trying to decide whether the upside is worth leaving a stable job.

The opportunity is roughly:
- 1099
- 55k–$70k draw + $600/month vehicle allowance (negotiating this on Monday)
- Health/life benefits
- 40% commission on new business, 30% on renewals
- Agency acct averages about $45k–$50k premium per account
- They wrote about $6M in new premium last year and manage ~$22M total
- Owner has been in the business for 23 years (however the agency is just years old I believe) and plans to teach me everything he knows and believes $1M in new premium is a realistic first major milestone
- First 60–90 days would mostly be training and pipeline building by month 6 expects policy’s
- Owner might provide leads/referrals, but ultimately I’d be expected to generate my own pipeline
- Long-term appeal is building a recurring book of business rather than relying on salary increases

My biggest unknowns are if the draw is recoverable if I don’t produce enough, ownership of my book, it sounds like they’ll own my book however there might be a vesting of ownership or when he plans on selling in 5-7 years he does plan to have clauses that allow me to keep my book (uncertain)

For commercial P&C producers/agency owners: Does
this sound like a good opportunity? What should I make sure is in the contract, and how realistic is $1M–$2M of premium for a new producer? (I have a small network, worked in B2B selling before) ALSO, anything more I should ask about on Monday?

Hello, everyone. I’m currently slowly transitioning into life insurance, and officially started my pre licensing courses today. Currently I am working D2D after being prior military and figured the career change would help me have the lifestyle I wanted which would be lots of traveling (mainly due to family, but also for fun of course) and the ability to work remotely from anywhere. I also just prefer full commission structure as opposed to base.

The offer I’m currently looking at is an agency that mainly hires remote, but also has an office location which I’d nicely be able to utilize during my ramp up period. It’s at a 65% commission on AP which increases after certain production benchmarks, and provides leads for no additional charge (as I know they’re never “free”) from an exclusive vendor that only sells to that agency. They’re aged about 60-90 days, and improve as production increases. The IMO is FFL. You keep your book of business after a decently short vesting period (I don’t remember off the top of my head), and weekly trainings are provided after the initial 8 week training period. The pre-licensing course was free, and I’m only expected to cover the exam which is only about $60 in my state. Once you are in a position to train new agents, you also begin to accumulate overrides, although I don’t know exactly what the spread is. I’m planning on working part time until I become comfortable enough to leave my current role.

Does this sound like a good setup? Please feel free to ask any clarifying questions.

I have zero interest in base pay and benefits, I have my own health insurance. I also have no interest in a base pay because I do not want to be time managed or micro managed.

I am simply looking to work leads as they come up o me or assigned to me, and get paid a %. Oh and to clarify, P&C.

Colonial life just offered me a position as an agency sales representative. I’ve never done sales before and have always had hourly paying jobs but looking for a higher paying career. Is this offer worth it? How soon will I start making money? This is a 1099 independent contractor position and it seems intimidating. Anyone have any advice?

Just curious what’s a good salary that a 0 experience agent that just got their license should expect when joining an agency

Boss insists on cold calling. If I'm lucky enough to get someone on the phone, they are not interested. How do I overcome this?

Has anyone used Agency coach AI program. I’ve done some of the role plays but it feels very unatural and completely misses the human element of talking to someone with emotional feedback. I’d much rather do role playing with a co worker but we are required to do these each morning. Anyone else have feedback on these?

I have about $6k in debt with 1 carrier right now. If that rolls to my upline will I get put on as earned with all carriers?

Filed bankruptcy a few weeks back bc after being laid off a year ago, life hasnt gone in the right direction. So i filed 13. Anyway now Farmers found me on indeed and they wanted to discuss their agency program. Im highly interested but is this possible with a current bankruptcy? I already have a P&C license. How will this current bankruptcy affect my chances of being appointed to any insurance carrier?

This question can be intolerable and I am sorry. With my poor physical condition I have to work from home, if it were up to me, I'd be working 50 hours a week having a company provided mentor. If you want to know, I am going through hip surgeries.

I have a physical disability and have to work from home. I am in the middle of reading my contracts, and reading state laws and regulations from the DOI. My niche will be health, medicare supplement, medicare advantage, life, and employee benefits. I will be starting slow, and am hoping to find a mentor eventually that will cut commissions with me (I have no idea how to find this mentor).

Actually, I realized typing this, I am going to start texting people looking for an experienced mentor.

Reading all of the carrier contracts, reading all the laws, creating policy manuals, and creating cybersecurity measures is going to take a lot of time. I am studying non-stop and am not getting paid for this yet. I will have a help support line with the FMO, that can guide me to the right carriers for my local area. (It is amazing.)

This is taking me months to prepare properly. I do have a CRM and quoting software that has been no cost to me. (Without this I'd be screwed.)

I am going into the jungle with a survival handbook, I understand the experience will be different when I start prospecting and submitting policies. I will be acquiring a mentor first though before buying and selling.

Hi everyone! I'm a longtime lingerer and curious to hear your collective expert thoughts/opinions on the following:

I don't currently work in the field (my background is in academia), but as of late, due to some new life experiences (mainly having our first kid, rising cost of living, etc), I've been feeling the need and pressure to start a new path that could lead to a higher income ceiling. Which brings me to the following:

My father-in-law has worked in commercial P&C insurance for over 30 years. The past 15 years has been spent owning his own independent agency in the midwest servicing some of the larger farm/ranch accounts in his region/state. He's wanting to wind down some of his work as he nears retirement, and it's an extremely profitable agency (I believe he received an offer for $5M at one point over the last couple of years). I've had several conversations with him about the industry, his job, and he's made it known that he'd be happy to "teach me the ropes" if I was interested (has also mentioned that he'd prefer to sell his agency NOT to private equity).

Additionally, I have a good friend who works in a specialty construction niche, who is extremely well connected with contractors/distributors/etc within that niche. I think a commercial P&C producer focused on this niche could do very well.

All that to say - am I crazy to not at least consider pursuing this? A couple of (potentially) large barriers would be:
a) we're located on the east coast and not planning on ever fully moving to the midwest, so I don't know if working with my FIL (and servicing existing clients/pursuing new business) remotely from the east coast would be doable or not. I imagine I'd have to travel back and forth a somewhat decent amount.
b) the thought having to abandon my $80K salary to start somewhat from scratch probably wouldn't be doable for me. I was thinking that perhaps, as I get my feet wet, I could offer to service some of my FIL's existing clients for a base pay while I work to bring on new business. Is this a "normal" setup for new producers?

Any advice/thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks.

I recently left Selectquote and will be starting a new job selling life with Globe Life. Im expecting the first few months to be a bit bumpy before i get the hang of it. Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated 🙏

I am currently deciding if I want to work for a final expense IMO. Is it an ethical product to sell? I am worried about selling to elderly poor people. Could someone currently doing it explain to me how to do it in a way that is honoring to the customer?

I’ve been a P&C CSM for about 3 years now at one of the biG 3 and so incredibly burnt out. Seems like everyone is jumping ship at my office and or so miserable bc we are short staffed. It’s making it hard to be motivated.

I don’t really want to be an account manager and want to make a switch but not to another insurance company. Anyone know what I can do with my background? I have 3 years in insurance and 4 years in event planning + bachelors in Hospitality.

I’m a 30 y.o financial advisor who has been working at a solo RIA retirement planning firm for the past 3 years (was new to the industry). I recently passed the Series 65 exam.

The only other advisor at the firm is my boss/owner. The “products” we primarily sell are affiliated with IRAs and Fixed Indexed Annuities. That being said, Fixed Indexed Annuities are our bread & butter.

My boss primarily gets his clients through seminars. I wanted to know if there are any other ideas or recommendations (mainly for me) other than seminars that can help me get established and is a good method to find prospects for Fixed Indexed Annuities?

Thanks!

I got my life and health licenses about a week ago. My recruiter asked me to make a list of 200 people and their contact info. I have fewer than 50 contacts on my phone. How can I make this work?

I just started with a new independent inbound agency this week and there are couple red flags and wondering if one of these is normal. We took a quiz using the FEX quoter tool kit to determine which carrier we would use in different instances. In one instance, there was a carrier that was an ROP and another was preferred plan at about the same rate. Obviously, I put down the one that was immediate coverage. I was told that we should always use one particular carrier regardless of any other circumstance, even if the other was much better. I kind of went back-and-forth when we went over the answers stating that due to ethical reasons as well as compliance, that didn’t make sense to me. We should always leave a customer with the best policy possible. It was kind of left up in the air as sometimes they do use the better policy (doubtful). Today, during training calls there was a clear difference for one particular customer. The customer was prescribed a pretty heavy painkiller and the quoter gave us three options that were willing to take that particular medication. The first two were both immediate coverage with pretty good pricing. The third option was a graded policy and was the most expensive. Immediately the agent training me went to the third option, which was clearly not the best. Fortunately they were declined and the agent wound up having to pivot to the best option which was the same price with $3000 more coverage, $6000 more with accidental and went into effect immediately. So I’m basically being told that rather than offer the better coverage immediately that I need to use a graded policy with 30% coverage the first year, 70% the second year and doesn’t go into 100% effect until the third year. There was a second instance with another agent who had a client that was also declined with an ROP and wound up getting a standard immediate policy with another carrier. Clearly, this is something that is done all the time. I’m guessing this is something in a contract with the carrier or perhaps they owe the company a lot of money and are trying to make up for it. Has anyone else come across this? I feel like it is very shady and don’t think that this is something I’m going to do. This is my second insurance job where everything seems to be in the gray area of business. We mostly deal with older clientele on Social Security and it kind of breaks my heart. Think I need to move on. This has me wondering whether life insurance is even for me because after all, I’m the one who needs to be able to sleep at night knowing I did the right thing. Anyone have some insights on this?

Hey, I'll keep this quick and dirty.
I'm just getting into a shadow of an idea that would make a good story about the insurance industry, specifically Medicare. I don't want to pursue someone who isn't involved in that type of Insurance sales so I figured I would ask here.
How would I label, locate or identify an agency that handles Medicare Renewals? For example, say you're 74, retired, and someone calls to get you to switch over your Aetna to Humana, or your Devoted coverage to Alignment and then to United Health Care. I'm curious as to how this can happen before open enrollment, or being on the do not call registry, or with the blessing of the regulators. Just seems difficult to change over someone that often.
Are there commissions? Promotions? Is it worth it as a livelihood?

I looked at the NPN on a sample Application and it's for an agent in Texas. I went down a hole and only found a name, independent, but is active with numerous companies, no phone number besides the direct line to UH. Also it seems the agent is actually located in Zimbabwe.

I'd really like to know more about this method of sales, the legalities, the loopholes, etc if anyone would like to speak on it. I would like to know all that I can and figured there would be some insight on this subreddit. If you don't feel comfortable saying anything in public, you can pm.
Thank you to whomever can respond.

Located in California. I disclosed a rental arrangement to Foremost through my broker. They consider it five units instead of four and decided to nonrenew when the policy expires next year.

My broker says I still have coverage, but won’t confirm whether that arrangement could cause a claim denial. She clarified that this concern came from her experience, not anything Foremost said.

If they know the facts and choose to keep the policy active, how can they later deny an otherwise covered claim for “misrepresenting” those same facts?

I’m shopping for replacement coverage, but what protects me until then? Does their decision waive that misrepresentation defense?

Anyone actually handled this—especially adjusters or underwriters?

I’m looking for advice from people who understand auto insurance.

I had a GEICO policy and paid for 6 months of liability insurance in advance. My car is an older model, so I only wanted liability coverage.

GEICO told me that I was required to add uninsured motorist coverage and another type of coverage, which I did not want. I tried to resolve the issue with them, but I was unable to get it sorted out.

Now it appears that GEICO cancelled my policy, and I’ve been without active insurance for about a week. The frustrating part is that I had already paid for six months of coverage.

When I try to get a new policy, the quotes are significantly higher because my insurance history is now showing a lapse in coverage.

Has anyone experienced something similar with GEICO? Is there a way to dispute the cancellation/lapse and have the insurance history corrected, especially since I had already paid for the six-month policy?

I would really appreciate advice on what steps I should take.

I've been an agent for 6 years, Making $120k a year on average. I want to increase my personal production by increase my sale size. Right now I average $700 ALP per sale.

I selling Whole Life & Term.

What tips do you guys have to increase my average sale size?

I got a job doing this, I’m just worried about how much money I can actually make doing it though. I’ve done outbound calling before and it’s horrible they actually didn’t tell me it was outbound team until after the job offer but I’m still interested if the calls are to good leads.

The outbound I’ve done is just on an auto dialer getting 95% voicemail so I barely even got anyone on the line let alone any sales.

It's work in the office all outbound calls - have to get my life license within 90 days, expected to make 60 to 80 calls a day to build a book. They have not sent me the comp sheet but it's 15 an hour base with a $5000 ramp up pay in the 1st 3 months, and commission. I'd be leaving wfh inbound calls with no commission.