Integrity Marketing acquires Agent Pipeline...

[Packerland]

Internet Marketing Group LLC has acquired another life and health distributor.

The Dallas-based senior products distributor announced today that it has scooped up Agent Pipeline Inc. of Saint Albans, West Virginia.

Agent Pipeline distributes products such as Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare supplement insurance, individual health plans, prescription drug coverage, and final expense products.

Agent Pipeline was founded in 1988 and now has 118 employees.

The company has relationships with 65,000 independent agents and about 1 million consumers. The company’s agents will place about 250,000 new insurance applications this year, and those applications should generate about $500 million in new insurance premiums, according to Integrity Marketing.

That would mean each application placed should generate about $2,000 in premiums, according to ThinkAdvisor calculations.

Integrity Marketing says Agent Pipeline’s ownership team — Larry Kimble, the founder; Ryan Kimble, the president; and Laura Kimble, the executive vice president — will get a stake in Integrity Marketing. Integrity Marketing did not describe the stake, but it said Agent Pipeline employees will be able to join the Integrity Marketing employee ownership plan.

Integrity Marketing completed 24 acquisitions in 2019. The company says it now has relationships with about 235,000 agents and will help carriers produce about $2.5 billion in new annualized premiums in the coming year.

The firm estimates that it has relationships with about 5 million clients, up from 4 million in 2019.

 

[Midlevel]

Soon we will all be under the same FMO. Thoughts on this being a good thing for agents or a bad thing? I'm under one of them and haven't seen anything good come out of it but can't say anything really bad has happened because of it either.

 

[Sanddollar]

It might be a good thing if it shakes up some of the smaller FMO's. Some of the FMO's here in CA promise many things but often do not deliver.

While I realize that Agent Pipeline is not a small FMO I would like to see what Integrity Marketing has to offer.

 

[Baseball7]

Integrity isn’t the FMO though my understanding is there simply a capital investor and have no standing in hierarchy

 

[rousemark]

Soon we will all be under the same FMO. Thoughts on this being a good thing for agents or a bad thing? I'm under one of them and haven't seen anything good come out of it but can't say anything really bad has happened because of it either.

That will be a bad thing.. Any time you have a monopoly, it is bad for the folks down the line because there is no reason for them to pay a higher commission rate to keep you from flipping to someone else.. You either take what they offer or leave the business..

 

[Todd King]

It might be a good thing if it shakes up some of the smaller FMO's. Some of the FMO's here in CA promise many things but often do not deliver.

While I realize that Agent Pipeline is not a small FMO I would like to see what Integrity Marketing has to offer.

Many of the "smaller" FMOs will treat you better than the bigger ones.

 

[Packerland]

Most of these

That will be a bad thing.. Any time you have a monopoly, it is bad for the folks down the line because there is no reason for them to pay a higher commission rate to keep you from flipping to someone else.. You either take what they offer or leave the business..

Could not agree more this is a bad thing for the industry long term..as more and more of all of the NMO's are taken over by Integrity none of us will have very much leverage...now at least we can move from an NMO if things just do not work out and they are not providing any value.

I do see government intervention at some point... I also foresee more of direct contacts with carriers.

Integrity purchases for the most part are NMO's not FMO ..We have 160 agents in our agency and we are not an NMO we are a large FMO with many GA, MGA's, and agents but we are small potatoes compared to huge NMO's...

I resent the fact that the NMO that are taken over pound their chest that they have 25k or 65K agents and do X number of policies and or have X annual sales .. actually they do not own their distribution (all of us that sell through that NMO is their distribution).

Not one dollar will fall to the agents or agencies that helped build these NMO's with these purchases ... so yes this is a bad thing long term..

Competition is what keeps all of these NMO's on their toes ..

 

[maalox]

Integrity isn’t the FMO though my understanding is there simply a capital investor and have no standing in hierarchy

This is wrong , Integrity is 100% the top of the hierarchy

 

[Northeast Agent]

Exciting Announcement from Senior Marketing Specialists

Dear Agents:

After very long and careful consideration, we are extremely proud and excited to announce that we will be joining the Integrity Marketing Group family. I want to first address what this means to our staff and to the thousands of agents we work with and serve across the country.

To you, our agents and partners, this gives us the ability to better serve you and your clients. There is not one single item that changes between you and our office - same people, same service, same web-site, same enrollment platforms, same quoting tools, same phone numbers, same councils, same podcasts and web shows......literally nothing that we currently do for you will change. What will change as we continue down this path is the ability to even BETTER serve you, have even BETTER tools and resources at your fingertips, create even BETTER marketing, advertising, and lead campaigns for you, and keep you even BETTER informed and positioned to be the very best advisors to your clients and staff.

As far as our staff, they are the reason we ultimately made the decision to move forward at this time. This gives them the ability to advance their careers and work closely with the very best of the best across the country in our industry. We were also able to announce to every one of our full-time employees that they now have ownership in the entire Integrity family of companies, one of the largest and fastest growing companies of any kind in this country.

We also want to explain our history with Integrity Marketing Group. This is not a decision we made lightly or swiftly. In fact, we were one of the founding partners of the original Integrity Marketing Group from many years ago, before the partnership with HGGC. We've known Bryan Adams, Mike Wingate and Tom Schueth for over 20 years and have worked side by side with them on many projects and partnerships over the years. If there were ever people outside of our own company that we would ever partner with, we knew it would involve Bryan, Mike and Tom. This partnership with Integrity now gives us the abilities and the resources to add more services, tools and opportunities for our agents and our staff.

Click here to read the official announcement.

We look forward to speaking with you and hopefully seeing you soon. If you have any questions or would like to discuss anything further, please feel free to reach out to me personally.

JoAnn Wray
President

 

[Ron Van D]

And, another one down,
Another one down,
Another one bites the dust.