SIAA Alliance for Independent Insurance Agents

[scooter33]

Why can't anyone answer me? Is is 25% to get out or 25% x 2????

How would we know what your contract says? Just read it.

 

[xrac]

Why can't anyone answer me? Is is 25% to get out or 25% x 2????

Sounds you need to have an attorney review that contract.

 

[oicu812nbama]

I read pat's post about direct appointments with all those carriers and have to wonder. When I called 2 different master agencies it was the same thing.. "fill out a business plan and maybe a COUPLE carriers will give you a direct appointment. You can use the master agency for the rest (at brokered commissions)." I have experience and can do that on my own. Why would I pay an initiation fee and give up part ownership of my business for that?
Obviously some people have a different experience or they are justifying their commitment. If it is the former, then why doesn't SIAA protect their reputation by having more uniform business practices?

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if something walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, drops greasy turds like a duck, and their contract says theyre a duck; they probably are a duck.

 

[F150]

Haters are gonna hate....

Proof since you keep bringing threads about this back to life

 

[Underwriter2Agent]

Let me start by saying I personally took on option #2 (hooking up with a local agent. Guess who? FLInsa, the guy is unbelievable. The most ethical, honest and friendly agent I have met in a long time. I can also confirm the posts by him to be true and the information he provided about the size of his BOB Are 100% accurate, I have seen screen shots. I obviously cannot confirm any of the SIAA Subject matter nor am I trying to do so.

We both started our agencies at the same time him with SIAA and me completely Indy no support, he was my mentor.

I moved on quickly, as I ended up finding my own solution, however my time with him was a great experience. Look the point of my post was to give everyone a realistic opinion and also to back up Larson. We all need a place to start our careers some will pay the piper some will not, however IMHO you will grow quicker if you have carrier support to major players and the quicker you realize it the quicker you GROW!

Last month I paid $1,800 and change as part of my fee and after looking at what my NET take home profit was trust me, I didn't mind at all and no regrets. Because I realize that had it not been for the fact that I have had access to the SIAA carriers I wouldn't be making what I made last month for sure.



Not sure if you are relating to my posts but the way I run my business is emotions are not part of business decisions at all. It is purely business decisions and that's it. For as long as I have been in the business - I know for a fact because I tried - not having the major carriers is very hard on an already hyper-competitive and tough business.

And your assertion that with SIAA you don't own the BOB, that is incorrect. Once you have met certain production numbers you get a direct appointment with the carriers and it is your BOB to do whatever you wish with it including selling it if you like.

To be brutally honest the reason why I personally restrict myself from visiting forums like this and only do it every now and then is because all you hear are the negatives on everything but the solutions are never given. Because my employees will always know that if they come into my office with a problem they also better bring the solution to that problem.

So I guess my original question no one has yet answered is, besides:

1) Sign up with a cluster or aggregator such as SIAA and pay their fee.
2) Sign up with a local agency that is willing to let you use their carriers and pay their fee via shared commission.
3) Buy into an agency which depending on the book and the appointments the agency has can cost quite a bit. But this is a very risky transaction in many aspects especially for someone that is new to the industry.
4) Struggle for years and years without the major carriers hoping you will make it past your third year.

What are my other options?


And to your second point, the fact that the barriers of entry in the P&C business have become harder and harder to break whose fault do you think that is?

Just look around this forum and you will have the answer. I just counted at least 5 threads of people with zero P&C experience (and some with barely any money) looking to open their own agency. How well do you think that's going to go? Sure, there will be the exceptions but historically most will fail.

Now put yourself in the carriers's shoes and here comes Joe Smith, no experience running an agency or producing p&C business asking for an appointment, would you give an appointment to Joe Smith? Didn't think so.

Folks, I will wrap my participation in this forum and this thread for a while by saying this. If you are new to P&C and would like to open a P&C agency, my recommendation is don't go into it without any experience because you just won't know what you don't know. Sure can you do it, of course. But it will take you a long time and money to learn the ins and outs. The best alternative is go work for someone else for a couple of years, learn all you can, then make the jump on your own.

But if you choose to proceed without any experience, don't go into it without an arrangement with someone on how and which carriers you will have access to. I can't stress this enough - without the major carriers you will have a very tough time.

And one last piece of wisdom I learned the hard way is don't listen to anyone's advice if they haven't done it themselves. Imagine a 400 pound man smoking a cigarette giving you advice on how to be fit. Makes no sense right. And if I can say this in a loving way, I see a lot of "experts" on this forum giving out opinions that have no real life P&C experience on the day to day operations of running a P&C agency.

To illustrate this, would you believe me if I told you that about 80% of my BOB comes from internet leads? That's all the marketing that I do, period. Nothing else. I am writing on average 40 new policies every month all from internet leads and have so from day one since my agency opened.

And it gets better, I am buying internet leads from the same lead companies that most everyone else here on this forum is saying they are crap and trashes them. And when I read those threads, honestly I really just laugh my way to the bank and stay quiet.

I am not of course going to on a national forum tell you what my processes are on turning those leads into clients. I will say though I spent a lot of money and time figuring out on how to work them just like other process in my agency which includes SIAA.

The point is, don't listen to the so called "experts or super geniuses". Ask the questions, talk to as many people that a have a track history as you can and at the end of the day make a business decision that you think is best for your business.

As I log out for a while good luck to all!

 

[oicu812nbama]

funny flains mentioned emotion in his post. unlike f150, i am not emotional at all. i don't spout hate or call people names on here. he has a problem with reading comprehension and follows me around on this forum. i was simply asking how could someone's experience be so different with master agencies? shouldn't siaa in order to protect their brand make sure that the offerings are uniform to a degree? one master agency offering to help get one or two appointments versus 15 or 20 is a big skew. i completely understand the benefit of having this help and am very disappointed that the master agencies in my area are not par. they did however have lower initiation fees than what i have read about on this forum.... i would rather pay the fee and get the access though.

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i also do not get on old threads just to complain about someone opening an old thread. didn't your mother ever tell you that if you didn't have anything good to say then don't say anything at all, f150? and why are you constantly defending siaa when you are with farmers and have no experience with siaa?

 

[HealthGuy]

F150 is a toolbox...and getting P and C appointments as a new agent is like contracting with the P and C mafia, whether it be SIAA or a local GA where you have to do indentured servitude with them...Its all the SAME...P and C is the biggest multilevel marketing scam for P and C kingpins above you - the General Agent contracting whores...making money off the new pee - ons in the industry and making excuses like oh NO we cant let little Johnny new agent write new business direct with us, hes too new and its too risky for us...BS from top to bottom...the P and C industry is old school, and they like their mafia kingpins to hold the direct contracts over new agents like overlords. Disgusting industry.

 

[oicu812nbama]

it is amazing to me that i can write a sky scraper in New York through a broker, but can't get a direct contract with Auto Owners for small bops until I have a $300,000 independent book. I could write $300k in a year. That is better than having several years experience with a captive p and c carrier? Does not compute to me. oh well...
i thought it would be like life and health; as long as you had experience and no eno hits then you are good to go with any company. then i thought clusters would be simple and really let you have access for a fee. lol i guess on the positive side once i get large enough to have my own direct contracts i can form a cluster and stab people in the neck with a pen when they piss me off.

 

[xrac]

F150 is a toolbox...and getting P and C appointments as a new agent is like contracting with the P and C mafia, whether it be SIAA or a local GA where you have to do indentured servitude with them...Its all the SAME...P and C is the biggest multilevel marketing scam for P and C kingpins above you - the General Agent contracting whores...making money off the new pee - ons in the industry and making excuses like oh NO we cant let little Johnny new agent write new business direct with us, hes too new and its too risky for us...BS from top to bottom...the P and C industry is old school, and they like their mafia kingpins to hold the direct contracts over new agents like overlords. Disgusting industry.

Has P&C appointments always been like this or is this a more recent development?

 

[scooter33]

F150 is a toolbox...and getting P and C appointments as a new agent is like contracting with the P and C mafia, whether it be SIAA or a local GA where you have to do indentured servitude with them...Its all the SAME...P and C is the biggest multilevel marketing scam for P and C kingpins above you - the General Agent contracting whores...making money off the new pee - ons in the industry and making excuses like oh NO we cant let little Johnny new agent write new business direct with us, hes too new and its too risky for us...BS from top to bottom...the P and C industry is old school, and they like their mafia kingpins to hold the direct contracts over new agents like overlords. Disgusting industry.

I also do think it is a bit of a scam. How does a captive carrier, ie: Allstate have an agency channel, own an online carrier (esurance) and also own a large brokerage that all of my carriers work with. Or how about, Geico writing Travelers products for their home products. I can go on and on.

All these carriers talk about how they want to support the agencies and how we mean so much to them. At the end of the day, it's all about how to get their shares up.

Back to the board topic.... SIAA is also a scam.