Looking to start boat insurance brokerage

[InsuranceJerk]

Buy an existing specialty broker. Make sure you get the experienced producers and carrier relationships to come along.

 

[Markthebroker]

Hey everyone, let me start off by saying that my/our insurance experience is very limited so forgive me for any ignorance.
We own a large marina and boat service center with 1000s of customers coming through every year. We are constantly making recommendations to our customers about where they can buy the best insurance from, or which insurance broker will be the best for them to work with. We have been doing this for years as a way to help our customers, but never getting anything for the referrals other than appreciation. It recently dawned on us that we should be getting a piece of the action for all of the customers that we are sending to these brokers and agents and that we should consider starting our own brokerage. We are located in Georgia and would like the ability to sit down with our customers and be able to offer them insurance options for their boats.

We understand that it can be difficult to get contracts(?) with various carriers in order to advertise their policies to your customers. What is the process for getting access to these carriers? I read just this morning about FMOs / IMOs but I have no idea if that is something that we need to consider, or if that is not something that would really apply to our goals.

We are happy to pay for guidance if there is some sort of class that we can take on starting a brokerage. We do understand that the individual brokers will need to be licensed, however we are trying to get as much set up prior to that as possible and are appreciative of any advice that you guys may offer!

Thank you in advance.

So you have some context, I am a broker that has been writing p&c for about 12 years. I have started and run a handful of businesses.

You've already gotten a lot of really good answers, but let me tell you this is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

- You will make far less than you think
- It will cost (money and time) far more than you think
- You will write far less policies than you think

There are reasons you rarely see car dealerships and marina's with their own agents - and it's not because nobody thought of it.