Straight answers
The questions people ask before they switch.
Every one of these gets asked, and most agency websites answer none of them because the honest answer costs something. The answers below are the ones we give on the phone, including the parts that do not flatter us.
Are you going to be more expensive than the companies advertising on TV?
What is usually behind itThe assumption is that an agent’s commission is added on top of the premium, so going direct must remove a layer of cost.
It is not added on top. An insurer that sells through agents pays the commission out of the same premium it files with the state; an insurer that sells direct spends that money on advertising instead. In most states the rates for a given product are filed with the insurance department, and an agent cannot mark them up.
What actually moves your price is which of the 12 carriers you end up with, and whether anybody re-shops it after year one.
The part that costs us something to say. Sometimes a direct writer with a deep multi-policy discount genuinely is cheaper on a clean, simple risk. When that is the case we will tell you, and we would rather lose the account than pretend the number says something else.
Isn’t an independent agent just a middleman?
What is usually behind itMiddleman implies a layer that could be removed to save money — the same instinct as buying factory-direct.
We are the distribution the carrier would otherwise have to build and staff itself. The commission exists either way; the question is whether it buys you somebody who can move you to a different insurer, or somebody who can only re-price you inside one.
The practical test: ask your current agent to quote you with a different company. If they cannot, that is the difference.
I can do this online in ten minutes. Why would I call anybody?
What is usually behind itFor a straightforward risk, they are right, and they are bracing to be talked out of something reasonable.
For a lot of personal lines, you can, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Our own quote form is a form.
The gap is not the ten minutes, it is the questions the form does not ask. An online flow will happily sell you dwelling coverage based on your purchase price, liability at the state minimum, and a policy that excludes flood, and none of those will look wrong until there is a claim.
Does getting quoted hurt my credit or my rate?
What is usually behind itPeople confuse insurance quoting with applying for a loan, and they have heard that shopping around gets penalised.
Quoting generally involves a soft inquiry, which does not affect your credit score. Hard inquiries are a lending thing.
Where state law permits insurers to use credit-based insurance scores at all — and several states restrict or prohibit it — being quoted is not what moves that score.
When I have a claim, are you actually going to do anything?
What is usually behind itThey have been handed a 1-800 number by an agent before and never heard from them again.
Here is the honest boundary: we do not decide your claim and we do not pay it. The carrier does both. Anyone who tells you their agency approves claims is describing a job that does not exist.
What we do is report it, chase the adjuster when a file goes quiet, read the denial letter against the policy language, and escalate to the carrier’s claims management when the two do not match. Our claims line is answered around the clock; the rest of the office is not.
How do you get paid, exactly?
What is usually behind itA fair question that most agencies answer vaguely, which is itself the answer people take away.
A commission from the carrier, calculated as a percentage of the premium. You do not write us a cheque for it. Where we do consulting work that sits outside a placement, that is a disclosed fee agreed in advance.
Carriers in this industry also run profit-sharing and volume arrangements with agencies. We will tell you when one exists on a carrier we are recommending.
The part that costs us something to say. The uncomfortable part of that structure: our commission is a percentage of your premium, so moving you to a cheaper policy pays us less. We do it at every renewal anyway, and you should know the incentive runs the other way when you are judging the advice.
You quoted me a carrier I have never heard of.
What is usually behind itBrand recognition is doing the work of a solvency check, because nobody has offered them a better one.
Advertising budget is not financial strength. The two things worth checking are the carrier’s independent financial-strength rating and its claims reputation in your state, and we will put both in front of you before you sign anything.
Every state also runs a guaranty association that steps in, up to limits set by that state’s statute, if an insurer becomes insolvent. It is a backstop, not a reason to ignore the rating.
If I move to you, what happens to my policies mid-term?
What is usually behind itA fear of a coverage gap, a cancellation fee, or a lapse showing up on their record.
Usually nothing immediate. We normally leave a policy where it is until its renewal, quote it against the panel before that date, and only move it if moving is better. A lapse between policies is the one outcome nobody should accept, and it is avoidable with a date on a calendar.
If you leave us later, you get the file: your loss runs, your declarations pages, your certificates. We are not going to make that difficult.
By situation
The objection changes depending on what you run.
These are the five kinds of client the agency is built for, and the one sentence each of them opens with.
- The trade contractor
“I just need a certificate. Can you send one and we can talk later?”
They have been treated as a paperwork transaction before, and they expect the coverage conversation to be a sales pitch bolted onto an errand.
- The professional services firm
“We already have general liability. Isn’t that the same thing?”
Nobody has ever walked them through the boundary between bodily-injury liability and professional liability, so the two words sound like the same product.
- The restaurant or shop owner
“Margins are thin enough. I need the cheapest policy that keeps the landlord happy.”
The premium is a visible monthly cost and the coverage gap is invisible until the day it is not. Price is the only variable they have been given.
- The established household
“I have been with the same company for fifteen years. They look after me.”
Loyalty feels like leverage. In most personal lines books it is the opposite — the longest-tenured policies are frequently the least competitively priced.
- The small employer adding benefits
“We are too small for group benefits. Everyone just buys their own.”
They have priced it once, years ago, at a smaller headcount, and have not looked since — and they are counting the premium without counting the turnover it is meant to prevent.
Where we lose
Four situations where somebody else is the better answer.
An agency that claims to win every comparison is telling you it has not run one. These are the cases where we are honestly not the right call.
A direct writer, on a simple risk
One car, a rented apartment, no assets to speak of, and a bundling discount. There is not much for an agent to add, and the price often wins.
A national broker, on a large account
Once a business is big enough to need in-house risk-control engineers, captives, or a dedicated claims team, a broker with those departments will out-resource 34 people in Asheville. We will say so before you outgrow us, not after.
A specialist, on a specialist risk
Long-haul trucking, aviation, marine cargo, and a handful of others are their own markets. We do not hold the appointments, and a generalist reaching outside their panel is how coverage gets written badly.
An app, on hours
Our office closes at 17:30 on weekdays and we are shut at weekends. The claims line is answered around the clock, but if what you want is a policy change at 11pm on a Sunday, a large direct carrier’s app will beat us every time.
Coverage is not bound here. Coverage cannot be bound, altered, cancelled, or modified through this website, by email, or by voicemail. Nothing here is a quote, a binder, a contract, or a guarantee of price. Coverage takes effect only when a licensed agent confirms it in writing.