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Not a fan... but the numbers do speak. Term is Term is Term... so it must be in the marketing. How do you light a fire under your work force?
Foresters is done with Voice Sig
- Thread starter suranceman
- Start date
Not a fan... but the numbers do speak. Term is Term is Term... so it must be in the marketing. How do you light a fire under your work force?
Because they have more agents than probably all of those other captive companies combined and
They buy policies on themselves and their families.
They also have the lowest AP by a mile for all captive companies. (Don't ask me to source it but that fact has been posted here with proof multiple times).
Rob Lion
Guru
- 653
Show me charts of the 13 month persistence of the all of the policies LOL.
- 5,055
completely agree that it surprises me. I think there is room for all the captives & independents, but I think the captives are underappreciated in some respects for how many people they insure that may not otherwise have coverage & how much many of those carriers carry the torch on regulatory issues, support of entities like NAIFA/GAMA & paying agents to get started in the industry. just somewhat proves getting to the consumer for something is better than having cheapest available on a website, etc
- 5,055
that may be true about Primerica on persistency, but the other captives like NWM, NYL, State Farm tend to have some of the highest persistency in the industry because the clients tend to have more products bundled in the household than a singular term like Banner bought from a website or an independent agent working from home
- 15,041
This is only surprising if you don't pay attention.
Pull the same chart for auto insurance. In almost every state 4 companies will appear in the top 5 carriers. The order may change, but these companies are almost always there: State Farm, Geico, Progressive, and Farm Bureau. It'll move around some as to who is #1, but you can all but bet these will be there. Of the 4, 1 is a direct writer, 2 are captive and while 1 has an independent channel, it writes a lot of business directly.
All the companies that do well have a massive marketing budget, not necessarily the latest and greatest of whatever.
Pull the same chart for auto insurance. In almost every state 4 companies will appear in the top 5 carriers. The order may change, but these companies are almost always there: State Farm, Geico, Progressive, and Farm Bureau. It'll move around some as to who is #1, but you can all but bet these will be there. Of the 4, 1 is a direct writer, 2 are captive and while 1 has an independent channel, it writes a lot of business directly.
All the companies that do well have a massive marketing budget, not necessarily the latest and greatest of whatever.
- 5,055
agree. you also have Allstate, Liberty Mutual, AAA & Farmers at the top of those lists in many states, which are also mostly, if not all, currently Captive. Even in Michigan where Geico is pretty much non-existent, those captive/directs have 70% of the market-share and the other 42 independent carriers in the Top 50 fight for the 30% market-share they have.
- 4,306
I have home and auto with Farm Bureau. I probably pay 30-50% more than I would through an independent. I went to them originally on the recommendation of a friend who works as an independent claims adjuster. My own claims experience with them (which is kind of high - 3 new roofs from hail storms since 2008, plus a theft claim and 3 or 4 auto comp claims!) confirms to me that it's worth the extra premium.
Life Insurance, especially term, can be more of a commodity. After all, there's only going to be that one claim! So it partly makes sense to shop the lowest premium. But a lot of people are like me in that they're willing to pay more for the elements of trust and stability. NWM, for one, does a fantastic job of communicating their worthiness to the client. Personally, having worked briefly with a couple of the other big captives, I've found that some of the smaller carriers outshine them all for being trustworthy and client friendly. But they don't have the marketing budget or dedicated field force to communicate that effectively.
I'm one of those independents basically working from home (even though I have a physical office elsewhere). I just got replaced by a Hancock agent selling at the worksite. I'm not saying this about most Hancock agents, but I have encountered one or two of their agents in the past who proved to be just a little unethical! I suspect this one of replacing my whole life policy with a UL, which in my opinion would be an inferior choice. I'm trying to get the client to at least let me look at the policy when he gets it. But since the client doesn't know either of us very well, which agent do you think automatically has more cred - the indie guy who sold a policy from a relatively unknown company, or the agent with the big well known carrier?
You and I know that no company is any better than the agent representing them. But us independents have to work a lot harder to earn trust.
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Home and auto insurance are thought of as commodities as well. And while there definitely are differences in coverage, there are a lot of similarities as well.
When it comes to a commodity, people tend to do one of two things. They go with what they know (marketing) or they go with what is the cheapest. In auto insurance, and home often follows auto insurance, the companies with the top market share have spent a lot of money on marketing and they do it every year.
Historically captives have had a good claims reputation, however it isn't what it use to be. Most have gotten much worse about handling claims, while the preferred independents seem to be doing a better job. Here the captives are just coasting on their previous rep.
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Yeah, in talking with a couple contractors about my last roof replacement, they were glad I was with FB. They had horror stories about some of the other big captives, which surprised me.
