Historically, if an account met an insurance company’s underwriting standards, the account was provided coverage in exchange for the required premium. Sometimes insureds and/or agents lied about the account actually meeting those standards, which would only be discovered after a …
Years ago, Chris Boggs authored a phenomenal white paper titled “How to Read an Insurance Policy.” Everyone selling insurance, adjusting claims, and underwriting should read it, especially people new to the industry. It is a must read. I share this …
The vast majority of commercial property, i.e., assets, are no longer physical. The majority of commercial assets are intangible. In fact, the overwhelming majority of assets owned by insurance agencies are intangible. They consist of those things called “expirations.” Other …
Carrier management teams are under intense pressure to cut expenses, but to make smart cuts, the right measures must be taken first. This is especially true when the cuts affect the distributors that generate all the carrier’s sales. For most …
A generation has passed since the last hard market and a substantial proportion of the people employed in agencies today have never experienced one. This means they have never dealt with surplus lines in such large volumes as we see …
A great opportunity exists for those who want to make a difference in their communities, clients’ lives, and businesses on a professional level. Insurance was created to protect people’s and businesses’ assets, i.e., to protect their balance sheets. When a …
Professional boutique agencies are the solution, the only real solution, for all those producers who compete against big shops, insurtechs that use bots rather than humans, and those with low price/low quality commodity price distributors. My light bulb moment, when …
As I am writing this article, AM Best reported another property/casualty insolvency this morning. If I am not mistaken, more P/C insolvencies and P/C carriers have become nonfunctioning over the past 12 months than in the last five years combined. …
What is being sold when an owner decides to sell their agency? Expirations (generically). What are expirations? Data. Why is data valuable? Because the data enables one to create a revenue stream. The revenue stream is what is actually being …
Having a sales culture in your agency is not synonymous with having business culture. As so many examples of vaporware and internet companies and virtual providers and game changing insurance companies that never make money prove, a business can have …
