davidcberry
New Member
10 years ago, I found it difficult to get into the P&C world even with experience as an insurance trainer, supervisor, & manager for Geico, Office Operations Manager for Liberty Mutual, award winning agent for liberty mutual, Allstate agent experience and more. As a result, I went with a larger agency group since no one would call me back. After a couple years in the group, I had to start reject carriers from all lines and specialties including life & health, personal & commercial P&C.
The reality about P&C is that it's extremely different from the life and health world. P&C is responsible for selling, service, document retention and whole host of other things. P&C is more like marrying or adopting a client while life & health is like consulting them and letting the company do the rest after issue.
In essence, most P&C policies are package policies smashed together to provide comprehensive protection. As a result, companies want to ensure that they have the right agent with the right approach and the right market. It's real easy to go after a dealership and try to sell a bunch of car insurance. Unfortunately, this could end up in disaster for the agent, client, and carrier.
Consider this, Progressive looks at insurance score, zip code, driving record, # of drivers in the household. Liberty Mutual wants higher education, married, homeowners with multi-cars. Safeco looks at education, married multi-car, and occupation. Allstate looks at credit (IS) driving record, and zip code. All of them have different approaches to prior insurance. You don't have experience with that as a new agent, and they aren't going to train you. That's the job of the people that get you in the door.
As a result, the unseen and unstated vetting process is to make sure we're putting on agents that unknowingly writes garbage. The best bet is to get with someone like SIAA, IHT, or another large group or cluster and let them help you ease into the process. Because quite frankly, my training in the captive world was far better than anything I've seen in the independent world; except for LUTC courses for life.
If you want to jump in and do it yourself, I think someone already said this but, start with a non-standard/ standard auto provider like Progressive and grow from there. Each carrier has a different way of doing things. This isn't life insurance. If you're looking to get more than that, you'll need to get into an agency group or cluster. While I don't know much about Michigan appointments, I can tell you that no even Texas aggregators wouldn't appoint a new P&C agent regardless of his life & health experience. Because he doesn't know what he doesn't know about the P&C world.
I've tried hiring life & health agents in the past, but found they didn't have the necessary background to get things going in the P&C world. It takes more than a bunch of life & health clients to sell P&C. So, try partnering with a group and growing from there. That's the best piece of advice I could give someone in your situation.
I wish you the best of luck!
The reality about P&C is that it's extremely different from the life and health world. P&C is responsible for selling, service, document retention and whole host of other things. P&C is more like marrying or adopting a client while life & health is like consulting them and letting the company do the rest after issue.
In essence, most P&C policies are package policies smashed together to provide comprehensive protection. As a result, companies want to ensure that they have the right agent with the right approach and the right market. It's real easy to go after a dealership and try to sell a bunch of car insurance. Unfortunately, this could end up in disaster for the agent, client, and carrier.
Consider this, Progressive looks at insurance score, zip code, driving record, # of drivers in the household. Liberty Mutual wants higher education, married, homeowners with multi-cars. Safeco looks at education, married multi-car, and occupation. Allstate looks at credit (IS) driving record, and zip code. All of them have different approaches to prior insurance. You don't have experience with that as a new agent, and they aren't going to train you. That's the job of the people that get you in the door.
As a result, the unseen and unstated vetting process is to make sure we're putting on agents that unknowingly writes garbage. The best bet is to get with someone like SIAA, IHT, or another large group or cluster and let them help you ease into the process. Because quite frankly, my training in the captive world was far better than anything I've seen in the independent world; except for LUTC courses for life.
If you want to jump in and do it yourself, I think someone already said this but, start with a non-standard/ standard auto provider like Progressive and grow from there. Each carrier has a different way of doing things. This isn't life insurance. If you're looking to get more than that, you'll need to get into an agency group or cluster. While I don't know much about Michigan appointments, I can tell you that no even Texas aggregators wouldn't appoint a new P&C agent regardless of his life & health experience. Because he doesn't know what he doesn't know about the P&C world.
I've tried hiring life & health agents in the past, but found they didn't have the necessary background to get things going in the P&C world. It takes more than a bunch of life & health clients to sell P&C. So, try partnering with a group and growing from there. That's the best piece of advice I could give someone in your situation.
I wish you the best of luck!
