P&C Carriers- Getting Started

[csanderson]

I have been helping clients with life and health for the last year and I'm looking into getting into P&C. Is it possible to not have an official office and run this from my home independently like I do my health and life? Are there good carriers to get signed up with? Any help is appreciated!

Also, what are good study materials to use to get my license?

 

[MoneyNirvana]

All very good questions. What state are you in...?. I m in Houston tx. Why bother with p & c now. I m in the same boat that you are in. I think of doing only very limited auto , flood & hotel property insurance and believe if I can find a good marketing program I will succeed at in 2+ years with a good enough book of business. I have no rater or CRM or accord forms just leads enough to generate good business. I pulled myself out of p & c some years ago. Also withdrew from securities license ( series 7 & 63).

Tell me how you plan to succeed with p&c.?

 

[djs]

Due to the costs of running a P&C shop, its really not something suited to 'part-time' if you want to be your own agent.

You can definitely run it out of your house, but many carriers won't give you appointments without a storefront / office of some sort. Some will. Just depends.

In life and health, appointments with carriers are pretty easy to come by. In the P&C world, appointments with preferred carriers can be difficult to impossible to obtain, especially without a substantial volume commitment (making part-time impossible). You can get non-standard carriers usually without a problem.

Then you have the costs, E&O, agency management system, raters, website, marketing, etc. Its more than most life & health agents think and can make it very cash negative the first few months.

Your best bet is to find a good local agent and become a 'producer' for them where they have all the appointments already and you just write for them. Nobody ever wants to do this, but unless you want to commit full time, its really the only way.

Also, you need to think about what you bring to the table that the other P&C agents in the area don't bring already. You'll quickly burn through your life and health cross-sell opportunities, what do you do beyond that. You'll also find that in many of these cases, you don't write them since you can't improve what they already have.

In addition, realize P&C is a time hog. The service of clients is more than most people realize, from changing cars to adding new drivers to complaints about rate increases, to quoting new homes to getting certificates of insurance to whatever. Staff people do this well. For an agent, it is a time hog.

Good luck. Just make sure you go into this with your eyes open, not because a few existing clients asked for a referral to a good P&C guy.

Dan

 

[MoneyNirvana]

Very well said Dan. You need one full-time CSR to devote exclusively to p&c who is absolutely wonderful at phone etiquette to pushing paperwork on time in detail & is not overworked & underpaid.

 

[csanderson]

Thank you all very much for the information, I think I willl rethink getting into P&C, I appreciate the eye openers!