Foresters is done with Voice Sig

[Newby]

You know much more than I do about all these other carriers. If premium charged for the risk is not what does these companies in then it must be their mgmt.? Or adverse selection?

With 5-Star I would say it was both of those. Definitely. If you could design a product that was perfect for attracting all the bad agents, they did it. And once it was out of the bottle they signed up everyone. That was a classic case of what not to do.

Settlers: My guess is that the product was profitable. Had to be because it was priced high and mainly only accepted healthier cases. But it wasn't attractive enough to get much past $10,000,000 in sales annually. So that whole company did about the same volume of business that my small agency does. But they had 50 employees plus a parent company and stockholders to answer to. We have four employees. So I think Settlers problem was they just weren't a sales minded company. Wouldn't take the risk to become a truly competitive product. The low volume and high overhead made them unattractive to their investors.

London Life? Your guess is as good as mine. Learned from his mistakes I guess. Lincoln seems to be a money maker now.

Shenandoah: very bad investments. They were invested heavily in the sub standard mortgages when that all came crashing down. And they were not "too big to fail" like AIG so no bail out money for them.

ForeThought- Lack of interest in that market. When the Devlin Group bought out ForeThought from Hillenbrand Industries the FE and Medicare products were already planned and in the development stage. But the Devlin Group had no interest in those markets or even in Funeral PreNeed which ForeThought was the Market leader in. They bought the company because it was an A Rated Company licensed in 48 states and was a bargain price for them to launch their annuities with. They just let the other stuff run it's course.

 

[Newby]

When I first started, I wondered about . "Going to run out of people to sell to." .. Failed to take in consideration that there are new births every year and that those people are progressing to different stages of life with different needs every year.. In fact, since the population has grown and there are fewer agents now than when I started, the agent has more "people to sell to." than ever before.

Here's what I have always told agents that think like that:
Look at today's obits in the newspaper. In a small city like mine there will be 20 or so deaths. All different ages. Each of those deaths had (on average) a few siblings, several cousins, several neighbors, co-workers or former co-workers, adult children, and on and on.

All those people had zero interest in Funeral/ cremation planning or life insurance last week. But this week, it's kind of on their mind. Multiply all those people by 20 per day (in my little town) and that's a lot of newly interested people for us to find through our marketing every week.

You will NEVER have a shortage of interested people to talk to in this business.

 

[Mattschmidt]

If charge backs were as bad as some of the independents claim, don't you think all of these companies would have gone out of business or lowered their premiums by now?

If charge backs were that bad don't you think all the agents with all the carriers would be migrating to the cheapest carrier?

I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe the FE carriers that have had troubles the last few years were cheap premium companies with loose underwriting?

If charge backs weren't a concern why would senior life charge an agent multiple times for a license in ONE state in a given year? Most carriers dont charge for state appointments. And if they did they wouldn't charge you twice per year per state

 

[theinsuranceman]

If charge backs weren't a concern why would senior life charge an agent multiple times for a license in ONE state in a given year? Most carriers dont charge for state appointments. And if they did they wouldn't charge you twice per year per state

Why don't you just pick up the phone and call them? I'm not a home office employèe.

 

[Mattschmidt]

Why don't you just pick up the phone and call them? I'm not a home office employèe.

I do. But these issues are topics you dont disclose to unsuspecting agents. Example ben bowman

Senior life tries to RIP off unsuspecting agents.
Why disclose this upfront to the forum and to your agents?

 

[theinsuranceman]

I do. But these issues are topics you dont disclose to unsuspecting agents. Example ben bowman

Senior life tries to RIP off unsuspecting agents.
Why disclose this upfront to the forum and to your agents?

This has never happened to me. To think that an insurance co. would try to deliberately rip off an agent is crazy. Come on Matt, I know you are smarter than that. Since you have a lot of negatives to say, why do you continue ton write SL?

 

[Abrasax]

This will be the FE business model that FE carriers will be using in 5 years.

In 5 years, insurance carriers will only work with captive agents? Agents want to work as brokers. Customers want to buy from brokers. 2 out of 3 wins. Successful companies follow the market, not the other way around. Captive carrier relationships are the way of the past, not the future. Some obscure, non-rated carriers are still stuck on the captive model.

 

[Allen Trent]

Some obscure, non-rated carriers are still stuck on the captive model.

While I tend to agree with you in theory, the data below doesn't necessarily support that. From what I can see from NAIC, 4 of the 5 top term writers are captive & NWM whose term is not very competitive nor do they offer many choices apparently issues the most term in the united states (shocking to me). not sure why, but I am guessing the non-captives are in a race to spend all their money on newest technologies, newest marketing, more aggressive underwriting to buy business & cheaper & cheaper to appease the independent writers who drive the competitiveness through real or perceived competition in a carriers fight for relevancy to be on the top 2-3 list of the agent. Captive agents have to sell what they have in their inventory. in that type of a world, it is possible the captive may actually be a more sustainable setup. but only time will tell.

PS- same is true in PC in some states.

 

[Abrasax]

While I tend to agree with you in theory, the data below doesn't necessarily support that. From what I can see from NAIC, 4 of the 5 top term writers are captive & NWM whose term is not very competitive nor do they offer many choices apparently issues the most term in the united states (shocking to me). not sure why, but I am guessing the non-captives are in a race to spend all their money on newest technologies, newest marketing, more aggressive underwriting to buy business & cheaper & cheaper to appease the independent writers who drive the competitiveness through real or perceived competition in a carriers fight for relevancy to be on the top 2-3 list of the agent. Captive agents have to sell what they have in their inventory. in that type of a world, it is possible the captive may actually be a more sustainable setup. but only time will tell.

PS- same is true in PC in some states.

View attachment 5295

That's really surprising. I guess I only know my own little corner. Thanks for sharing. I'm really surprised to see Primerica as number 2. Those big companies must have a massive, well established marketing push.

 

[Cornelius]

Ok I will say it. We see all kinds of bashing but who is #2? A bunch of part-timers..I'm not promoting but just making an observation.