Ex Captive Agent Needs Help

[kar]

I have been a captive agent with Farmers for 8 years. Now I need to get appointments with different carriers. Is it easy to get an appointment? any suggestions? Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[DHK]

I wish I knew how to help you... but shouldn't you have figured that before leaving Farmers?

 

[mattt]

Congratulations! You should have had that figured out before your last day. You might be able to get direct appointments with a couple carriers but they will each want 6 figure volume commitments. I would recommend joining a cluster/group that doesn't lock you into a super long contract. Look them up online or in this forum and you should get a pretty long list. Welcome to the independent side. It is quite eye opening.

 

[Norwayguy]

I have been a captive agent with Farmers for 8 years. Today was my last day with them. Now I need to get appointments with different carriers. Is it easy to get an appointment? any suggestions? Thank you in advance for your help.

If today is your last day why in God's green earth would you only now start asking those questions.

 

[kar]

I couldn't get an appointments with different carriers while with Farmers. In the meantime I have an appointment with Superior access(since 2008). I would like to get direct appointments with different carriers. I don't want to be captive anymore.

 

[DHK]

Just because you couldn't get the appointments while you're captive doesn't mean that you couldn't have shopped around and figured out where to get the appointment paperwork, complete it, and have it ready to submit.

 

[indienoise]

Indeed. You should've been planning from the moment you suspected you would be leaving. Superior Access is ok for placing business you wouldn't win with your direct appointments, I use them a handful of times per month, but I wouldn't want to build an agency around that. I'd start looking for some regional carriers if I were you, and maybe just supplement that with Superior Access if you need one of the big players.

If you feel confident in your abilities to produce and have a strong history of production, by all means get an appointment or two with the big boys. I've investigated quite a few clusters/aggregators/groups, and they all are a bit of a different fit based on your priorities. If you're like me and not looking for lots of back end support and the like, and just need appointments and a simple contract that doesn't lock you in long term, I'd highly recommend contacting Insurance Pro Agencies.

Good luck and I hope you can get all this worked out. You're honestly probably looking at a minimum of 90 days until you're writing business, unless you're planning on doing nonstandard as well. Still, you're looking at 2-4 weeks at best even for those appointments.