Independent looking to sell Health and Life

[quotepro]

Hello,
I'm a broker in california and I am heavily invested in selling P&C. But I want to start selling health to individuals and business', along with Life. I have small experience in selling Life insurance, I have my license in accident and health, and Life so that will not be an issue. I have been doing my own research of course, but I always like to hear opinions from those of my kind. If anybody has any advice, comments or ideas for companies to look at or to avoid, it would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

[wlunday]

You are going to either spread yourself too thin, or not do justice to either one or both of the markets. It's hard to accomplish unless you have a team to work with. teams come in different shapes and sizes, from actual employee groups to contract (1099) arrangements to simple networking agreements.

If you want to capitalize on the commissions, find a qualified person to work closely with. Then, the synergy will build and you'll both do better than by yourself!

Swymmer

[quotepro]

Thank you for your reply Swymmer. I do agree with what you posted and its helpful at the same time. It confirmed the reason why I have hesitated in the past. Having a good team is always a good idea. Thanks again.

[gregcw]

I agree in part with wlunday that you can spread yourself too thin. Health Insurance however more closely paralells P&C than Life does and the income from health is consistent. My retention from health is good and it represents about 20% of my monthly revenew which is outstanding since I only place between 3 & 5 new policies annually. Persistency does pay off and there is less service on health than on P&C. Basically I do this as an accomodation for my P&C customers and it does help to tie up the customers business. LIfe insurance is more complex than health with more options and it does also require a commitment to prospect and try to get the business.

[beyert1]

I too am heavily involved in Personal and Commercial lines but felt I was doing my clients a dis-service by not offering life insurance. I do have my license for L&H and used it for quite a while but became unhappy with all of the work involved in doing a life application. During a CE class on E&O it was discussed how potential "in-actions" could cause an E&O claim. The main subject was not offering your clients Life insurance.

After much review I decied to bring a person in to handle all of the life sales. I did not want to bring a person in full time so I found someone who is selling AFLAC and made an offer to them to sell Life and Health to my clients and if so needed offer the AFLAC products. This has worked out very well. My clients have a full offering of a product they need as well as adding on to their current health coverage with the AFLAC products. I set the commission structure up so my sales person makes out very well and she is happy doing this. In fact, she has sold more life policies in a matter of 3 months than I sold in the last 4 years. My clients have been happy and this is important.

I made sure to bring a person in who only wanted to work on my book part-time so she would be able to sell the AFLAC product. Unfortunetly she is still under the illusion she can make money with AFLAC. By doing this I have been able to have her work my book and not put a strain on her to produce. Also, she has brought in some commerical and personal lines clients who would like to have all of their products with one Agency.

If your clients have Life as well as P&C lines with your Agency they are something like 85% less likely to leave you. Many of my commercial clients have been very happy because we have been able to set them up with Key Man coverage which they did not have before.

I would suggest you hire someone who can handle the rejection received in working with Life and to be able to handle the verification process needed to show you have offered your clients Life and they rejected.

In regards to health insurance, this is always a tough one. Find someone like http://www.benefitmall.com to partner up with to do your health insurance. They do so much of the work for you and it makes the process much easier. The best thing is they shop the carriers without you having to be appointed.

[quotepro]

Thanks to everybody for their time and help. : )

[Rainmaker]

Let's face it, the more lines you have cross sold with your clientele the higher the retention you will have. So you are really talking about increasing retention through cross selling.

Options are:

1) if enough business exists to do this with an additional team member
2) if enough business exists to cross train an existing team member
3) if it makes sense to outsource to a third party vendor solution that specializes in writing business like this from agencies, such as a QuickLife or National Brokers, etc
4) if it makes sense to outsource this business to a local agent who can then refer your core business back to you from their book (a strategic alliance arrangement)

A good metric to follow is that for every $1,000,000 of EBEN revenue you'll have about 2% of individual life and health business, for every $1M of p/c revs you'll have about 1% to 1.5%, for every $1M of personal lines you'll have about 2.5% to 4%.

Hope that helps in scoping this direction for you.

[thebeacon]

Before you consider selling health insurance on your own I would consider working with someone else. Become a captive agent to learn all the ropes and then go on your own. It will actually save you time, instead of trying to figure it out all on your own. There are plenty of agencies that you can work for first. You can even become a captive agent for Insurance companies like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

[Rainmaker]

http://www.rainmakeradvisory.com/solutions_builder.html

click on the QuickLife tab (and others if you wish)

Nothing wrong with forming strategic alliances and partnerships, but, based on your question, I think you are better served aligning with turn-key vendors that provide a lot of support so you can do it on our own and make more money that way that splitting 25/75 with another (uh, you would get the 25%, my friend) so would suggest that route first.

If you run into problems or feel like you are in over your head - then consider the strategic alliance partner. However, for small market work you should be just fine doing it yourself.

Hope this helps!