Thinking of getting back into business

[AZ123]

Hello Everyone,
I would love to get your opinion. I'm 28 years old and worked for Liberty Mutual for 4 years after college selling personal lines p&c and life insurance. I left the insurance industry when I moved back to my home town 3 years ago. The city I grew up in has about 60k people and my family is pretty well connected. My current job requires me to be in an office 8-10 hours/day so I haven't built many relationships with potential centers of influence. I don't know anything about flood insurance, commercial, windstorm, health etc. as all I sold with LM was personal lines P&C. Had 650 auto/home policies on the books when I left. If I were to get back into the business now, should I attempt to go out on my own at this point or would I be better off going to work for another independent here in town? I don't know what I don't know. I would appreciate your thoughts!

 

[Mike007]

If your family is well connected, it is a huge advantage. My thinking is this, life and sales are hard, why the hell would you want to go into sales to just work for someone else. You go into sales to make the big money. Not make someone else the big money. If you just want to be an employee, there are better things to do than sales.

There are plenty of options out there for you to look into if you want to be an independent agent in P&C. Just google insurance cluster and there are plenty of options waiting for you to pick from. Some cluster buy ins are fair, some are outrageous.

 

[AZ123]

I appreciate the input Mike007. I guess my hesitancy would be having to figure out the commercial, flood, and windstorm- especially since I now live on the coast. I'm also interested in the health side. I had lunch the other day with a gentleman who is retiring and looking to sell his book. His reccamendation was to work with an endependant agency for a few more years to expand my knowledge/skill set...especially on the commercial side.

 

[Mike007]

Like anything else, you'll have to learn it. Whatever cluster you decide to partner up with, they or the insurance companies they have contract with should have plenty of webinar training for you to attend. Commercial is also my biggest weakness and I never bother to learn it and I never bother to provide it.

Towards the end of my P&C business, I was approached by a few experienced but retired commercial agents who got bored from retirement and was looking to work part time for low wages ($15-$16 an hour). They wanted to oversee the commercial side and train my two part time agents and me. But unfortunately, I was re-organizing my agency and wanted to faze out the P&C business so declined the offer and eventually stop writing P&C through my agency.

Now, I let another agency quote, sell, and service all my P&C business and I collect 50% of new business and 50% renewals by doing absolutely nothing but just be a referral system.

So if, I'm you. I would definitely start searching for a cluster. Find that fits your need, fits your budget. Most cluster will require a buy in. Some buy in range in the $8,000 to $60,000. And most of them will have monthly fees for rating system and E&O coverages. And depending on the buy in, they will take a % override cut of your overall sales.