I bring up this conversation with other independent agents and wanted to post here to get feedback. How is it that we as independent agents have to be licensed to sell insurance to the public, but individuals can go online and transact insurance with no guidance. Doesn't make sense! I can't go online and get a loan on whatever terms I want.
Geico Vs Independent
- Thread starter AIRECS
- Start date
- 736
there was an article about the difference in coverages when you compare a geico form vs standard iso form.
We should start a discussion on how to combat the geico policy lol.
We should start a discussion on how to combat the geico policy lol.
because the insurance industry has a better lobbying group than the mortgage industry does
- Thread starter
- #4
- 11,997
Why care?
The value of an agent goes further than the differences in a policy. Most customers don't care because the industry has spent millions (if not billions) convincing consumers that insurance is a commodity. To a degree that's true, but you'll get MUCH more mileage out of actually going over the coverages with customers and explaining UI/UM and building value that way then trying to talk about hypotheticals and minor discrepancies that may or may not in application actually mean anything. I used to do that with Allstate and in fact, I still have that conversation with my friends. Just the UI/UM conversation alone is worth a few bucks.
The current dialogue is about price and that's how the online/radio/tv marketers do it, price, because it's easy to understand and because it's too difficult to train call center reps to sell on value over price. If you're competing with them on their terms (price), you're playing a suckers bet. Play on value (explain things) and you can win some fights you won't win on price alone. Maybe anecdotally some differences in policy language help push value, but point out to someone that they are saving a few bucks on UI/UM because they can only go after $25k if someone hits them and takes off while they're insuring others for $300k and you can illicit some genuine concern about the type of insurance they have.
- Thread starter
- #6
Very well said Josh. These are all things we practice at my agency and your right. I think I may have fell off the path of my original post. My main concern was to address the issues that we have to have licenses to sell but individuals can go online and purchase insurance without guidance of what they are purchasing. Something doesn't jive there! We had a group discussion at a conference I was at a while back and the consensus was over time as big lawsuits occur and the clients are severely underinsured since they were only clicking to get the cheapest price. This will end up having the courts pointing the finger at GEICO and etc. When the client doesn't have enough coverage or proper insurance in place. Potentially ruining people's lives!
