Co-Owner in Agency Trying to Gauge 1st Year Production

[JSO]

I'm a co-owner in a small P&C agency in FL. I'm trying to find out if our production is up to par and what we should expect with the marketing we're doing. We opened the agency in Feb 09, our first full month of production was March. To date we're at $252,744.71 in written premium. We've done this with no advertising at all. The business we've written has been done with current contacts and outside marketing by myself and partner. We do have some agents that refer business to us occasionally but, no full time agents. I'm wanting to find out from others that have been in my shoes if this is typical for production for what we've got to work with or, are we on the low end or high end of the spectrum. Considering our marketing budget of basically $0 and the economy should we just count our blessings and be happy with what we've done thus far without any advertising.

If anyone has been through the first year of starting an agency can share their production and ideas it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[djs]

I'm not sure I followed the question very well. Are the 2 of you working the business full time? Or are both of you working part time?

Do you really want this question answered?

I do not know the Florida market, but, asking the same question in California, assuming you are writing mostly home/auto type of policies, you're GWP suggests about 250-300 policies.

If both of you are fairly new to insurance when you started this up, this is pretty decent, but by no means a record breaking year. On the other hand, if you have been writing P&C before, this is probably on the low side. Of course, with no advertising, you won't get much further.

I know the Florida market is a bit tough with homeowners. I don't know if that helps you or hurts you.

I remember my first year in business. It is probably the hardest in actual production. You spend a lot of time working out kinks in processess. You did okay, not overwhelming, but okay. Make sure you have a plan for year 2 and execute.

Dan

 

[JSO]

Thanks Dan for the quick response. Sorry for not being more clear on our current setup. I'm out marketing and trying to make the phone ring full time. I get the hard part....... My partner is in the office writing the business then working nights at a grocery store to make ends meet. Plus, we have another 1099 working with us full time which started out just writing commercial buisness. We've found being a new company getting direct appointments with commercial companies isn't easy to do and, the business we were writing isn't worth the paper apps it was written on. Always chasing $ down, apps, etc....So, we've gone back to 95% personal lines. Our 1099 is writing some business but, over the last month she's been cleaning up the commercial business we have and also chasing down all the required docs on the personal lines side. So, over the last 1.5 months her new business production hasn't been much. My partner and I have only been in the independent market for about 3 years each. We both got started with a large national carrier in a call center writing all over the country all inbound calls. FL is definetly an independents world now. I wouldn't want to be a captive writer in FL these days, it's damage control for them only.

Any suggestions on marketing with a limited budget other than old fashioned way? I'm currently working on enhancing the website and looking for partners to link to and drive some business in that way. It's been difficult finding agents to refer business we pay them 60% on the front end and 40% on renewals, any suggestions on hiring agents to multiply our efforts?