Who takes cash and does not require money orders?

[mhutch69]

Does anyone STILL accept cash for ANY reason in a retail insurance office? Just wondering as some clients are not totally honest and "might" show back up later in the day or week and burglarize the office to obtain all the cash they WATCHED the office collect?

Just wondered?

[independent guy]

We take cash. We have an alarm system, security cameras, and a bolted down safe. No one has ever tried to break in.

To a criminal though, I would think that the personal information contained in client files would be much more valuable. With that, ID theft would be very easy, and the loss would be much greater than whatever cash is in the safe. This is also why I do all drug & background checks on people imaginable at this point, and do not hire teens as "filing clerks".

[bpafford]

Our office will not accept cash except for new business in our Family Lines Department. The normal monthly payments made in the office must be made by check or money order. We've been doing this for about 2 years now.

Independent Guy, you are definitely correct stating that the personal information would be worth more than whatever cash is in the safe. Excellent point.

[meytai]

hi Guys,

I never thought to make it a rule to accept MOs only. We take cash.. and have no second thought to it.. does it make life easier?

I run a non-standard agency,

Meytai

[mica.cooper]

I think it comes down to your business.

Are you a retail agency serving consumers or business? If your serving consumers, then its pretty obvious that your going to get walkins with cash. I see walkins monthly paying their auto/home insurance because they don't have a checking account.

I think the question is do you want to serve customers that do business in cash? My opinion would be yes and not to discriminate against these folks and to serve their needs. I would question the agency that does not accept cash because US currency is valid for all debts and anyone refusing to accept it is, I believe, committing a felony...get your agency liability ready!

Just my 2cents,
MC

[wlunday]

As a rural retail agency we take in $1000's of cash dollars weekly. One of our strong selling points is that a rather large regional agency that also represents many of the same companies as us will not even talk to their personal lines customers! These folks walk into our office and tell us the stories about how they were treated by the other agency staff, that they'd need to go get a money order and mail it in themselves... pretty crappy customer service!

Yes, we take advantage of this, offering down home, friendly customer service. We even give our clients coffee in real ceramic coffee mugs! And, we always ask for referrals... we know many of their friends and family are insured by the big, un-friendly agency!

Back to the money part... We too have a safe, but also our bank is right next-door so almost always the funds are deposited quickly. It also makes it handy for not keeping too much petty cash around. I agree with M.C.

Swymmer

[gregcw]

We used to take personal checks, until just recently. Now that we are having to deposit the payments into our checking account, for the company to sweep our account, bad checks are expensive and costing us too much money. My book keeper brought a recent check, which bounced, for $95.00 to my attention. That carriers policy is that it is our problem... not theirs. They would not even let us cancel the policy for non-payment!!! This ate up ALL of the commision plus for this customer. We have attempted to call the customer, who's phone is now disconnected, and sent them a letter to attempt to collect the premium plus service charges from them. We are still out the $95.00 and the returned check charge of $3.00.

Even when the carrier returns the premium for a bad check and reimburses for some of the service charge, it is still not enough to compensate us for: the full service charge; the time spent in rectifying checking and customer accounts; notifying the customer and requesting reimbursement of our charges. These activities eat up ALL of or MORE than we get in commission on these accounts.

Sending bad checks, like the one mentioned above, to collections so that we can get half of it back so that we can actually make something, or at least lose less, on the account.

The result is that our policy for renewals in our office is either CASH or MONEY ORDER. We are a rural agency and many of our customers stop in and make their payments here and if they HAD to purchase a money order BEFORE coming here might not pay their premiums.

[darnovak]

Here in NY, Progressive finally decided to not reimburse agents for insured's NSF checks deposited to our Progressive fiduciary sweep account. All agencies should maintain a separate premium sweep account for each carrier authorizing your agency to do so. When an insured comes in with a check made payable to the agency as payment for their direct bill premium, we utilize the "check by telephone" offered by the carriers and call in the routing # and account # and amount of the payment. The carrier checks the account electronically and will either accept and process or decline the payment. Taa...daaa
No more NSF checks made payable to your agency or the carrier deposited in your sweep account. If a carrier does not offer "check by telephone" and an insured gives you a check made payable to your agency (and doesn't have another check available to re-make one payable to the carrier), endorse it on the back and add "NO RECOURSE" and write "pay to the order of XYZ Company" and mail it to the carrier. This allows the carrier to go after the maker of the instrument, not your agency. This may not apply in your state though, so check with your state's banking department or a knowledgeable person at a reputable financial institution. regards,

[meytai]

We are getting off-topic, kind of, because he's talking about cash.. like i said, kinda..

But i'll go with the flow! We accept everything.. including personal checks.. and we RARELY run into the NSF.. but when we do.. we have the backup of our companies.. and they will return those funds to it.

But this post has made me rethink some things.

[mhutch69]

The reason for my inquiry is that several non-standard auto agencies in Arizona were robbed at gun point recently due to "talk" among employees or customers who knew more than they should have.

It was somewhat of an inside job... We write non-standard auto and many do not have banking options due to citizenship or past banking problems. We open our stores next to PayDay Loan stores who all sell money orders. I will NOT accept cash and require the client purchase a money order. Initially, I paid the money order costs but have found it is not a problem to make the client incur any minimal costs.

I have not been robbed due to NOT taking or keeping cash in my offices. It is also NOT a temptation for employees to "borrow" the money either.

Cash is dangerous to the employees and safes do nothing to deter a desparate criminal with a weapon. I would open the damn safe in two minutes with a gun to my head. So would all of you....

think about it.

[AlstonCPCU]

Buy a money order machine and sell money orders. Collect the cash and deposit it daily rather than sending folks down the road for a MO.

[etimer]

Take cash? No.

I guess somebody needs to service that side of the business. I once knew a guy that had a downtown agency and accepted cash. I watched all the BS he went through with the constant cancellation notices, etc. and said to myself....I would never start engaging in that clientele. More power to him.

He didn't start out that way. He had been in the same location for 35 years and what was once a good neighborhood changed during his 35 years. He ended up with people that lived on a shoestring budget and depended on that monthly government check.

But then I am still amazed that there are agencies that don't want to participate in direct billing.

[tsntyler]

In my agency, we take cash and bank cards (with an added surcharge for convenience) and do NOT take personal checks made payable to the agency.

In the past, I have been burned by folks giving a check on a closed account or stopping payment on a check. We did what we could do to collect and were not always successful.

If you STILL take checks and cannot collect, send them a 1099 at the end of the year!! Then, you can write off the entire amount!

Hope this helps!

[wlunday]

Etimer, direct billing is the payment method of choice in my agency, but in my small town many folks bring their direct billing to my office, pay cash and enjoy a cup of coffee. We like it that way.

I'm sure the demographics in the "big" cities are much different. In the 11 years I've owned this agency I could count the number of bad checks we've received on one hand. And, the companies have all been good enough to recend the coverage and forgive our agency of any earned premium charges.

If a "regular" doesn't come in my staff actually wonder about him/her! But again, we're in a small town with about 2000 accounts. Bigger agencies are not afforded this type of luxury.

wlunday

[meytai]

Take cash? No.

I guess somebody needs to service that side of the business. I once knew a guy that had a downtown agency and accepted cash. I watched all the BS he went through with the constant cancellation notices, etc. and said to myself....I would never start engaging in that clientele. More power to him.

He didn't start out that way. He had been in the same location for 35 years and what was once a good neighborhood changed during his 35 years. He ended up with people that lived on a shoestring budget and depended on that monthly government check.

But then I am still amazed that there are agencies that don't want to participate in direct billing.

You are talking about something else

This is direct billing.. just that they come in the office to pay

I think you are also talkin about preferred versus non-standard.