Assurant Pulls the Plug Who's Next?

[Continuum]

"Assurant Health has made the decision to reduce individual major medical commissions in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas to 0% for new business."

Reduce to 0% commission? I'm no English major, but wouldn't a better word be "Eliminate"

Sorry don't mean to beat a dead horse here, it just bothers me.

 

[TN_agent]

CHA (co-op in TN) has stopped accepting any more applications for the year.

 

[Yagents]

Here is the way I think things went down:

First, in certain areas of the country, or for specific client situations, they were the best choice........period.

Second, Assurant has always been the most broker friendly company, and over 70% of their IFP biz comes from Agents.

Third, they got overwhelmed with applications, service levels went way down, phones had busy signals, they flat out got too much business.

Fourth, executives had a meeting (Ops Mgr, Tech Mgr, Cust Serv Mgr, Fulfillment Mgr............and the Sales Mgr.........and CEO) How do you think that went down? Everyone saying we can't handle the volume, our employees are threatening suicide, we can't hire fast enough.............all while the sales director is saying we need to sell more. The sales guy always loses in this situation.

So, how do you slow down sales? don't provide any incentive for agent to sell, and reduce traffic dramatically, step back, catch up, don't piss off current clients, save employee's insanity, and push forward and focus on next OEP which is just 7 months away after OEP ends.

Other carriers who didn't get as much business should recognize that the agent community threw so much business at a carrier, they couldn't handle it. (yes, they should have been more prepared) This shows how powerful we are, and the other carriers should not interpret this move as a sign the agent is not needed........quite the opposite.

I'm willing to give them another chance next year. I don't blame them for having to make this decision. I am personally in the same situation. They only took away future commish on future sales, and gave us 5 days to get some last minute clients on the books. They didn't go after any past business, and will adhere to the commish payout schedule.

 

[russelltw]

Yagents, I think Ann hit it on the head. They were losing money. That will get the execs attention quickly. Quickest way to stop production and "stay on the exchange" was to lower commissions to nothing. I had a similar situation with a life carrier. They made a change on how the agents were compensated and volume dropped to nothing.

I hope you are correct for those agents who wrote business. Hate the see something like this happen when that's one of your go to carriers...

 

[pcbinsurance]

I think (locally), State Farm and Health Markets are (attempting to) selling Assurant. That basically eliminates them but they weren't competitive around here anyway and the network sucks.

 

[goillini52]

Re: Assurant Update

This is actually the 1st thread started about this so it is not old news...

The real purpose of starting this thread was not as much to share the 0% commission change as open a conversation about what this really means to our business (which I think is that other companies will be taking similar steps in the next 1-3 years).

My response was to someone who had just started a new thread(the 4th on this subject), which has now been merged with this one.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Re: Assurant Drops Commissions to 0% Effective (almost) Immediately

Sneaky how they simply made so agents will not sell their products as opposed to pulling the plans entirely which would have kicked them out for 5 years. That would indicate that agents were submitting a good number through them since they will still be listed on the exchange and thus DIY consumers can still purchase...

Cigna did the same thing with gold & plat plans for '14

 

[sk337sk337]

CHA (co-op in TN) has stopped accepting any more applications for the year.

Well, that's good to know. I wish they would have sent something to their agents.

 

[jbage007]

Re: Assurant Drops Commissions to 0% Effective (almost) Immediately

Isn't Assurant one of those A rated carriers that should always be recommended over lower rated carriers?

Absolutely. If a company is going to dump its comp down to zero, you absolutely, positively want it to be an A (or A- in the case of Time) carrier.

 

[TN_agent]

Well, that's good to know. I wish they would have sent something to their agents.

The only way I found out was by filling out a healthcare.gov app today and CHA was no longer an option. Last night I was still able to see their plans on healthcare.gov so this has been an overnight change.

One of my colleagues got the scoop that it is for the rest of the year, I haven't heard anything official actually. I think they have been overwhelmed with the number of enrollments.

Hoping I get paid on the business I have already written with them.