Who we serve
Five kinds of client, and the ones we turn away.
Most agency websites say they serve everyone, which is a way of saying nothing. These are the five situations we are actually built for — what usually goes wrong in each, and what we put in place. If you are not in one of them, the last section on this page is the useful one.
Business
The trade contractor
Roofing, framing, HVAC, electrical or plumbing. Three to twenty-five on the crew, a yard full of trucks, and work that comes through general contractors.
What sets the price: Payroll and vehicle count, not revenue — both drive the premium.
What usually goes wrong
- A general contractor’s insurance requirements page asks for additional insured, waiver of subrogation and primary/non-contributory, and nobody has explained which of those the current policy actually grants
- Certificates take days to come back, and the job starts Monday
- Subcontractors’ expired certificates roll onto your premium audit as if they were your payroll
What brings people in
- A contract that will not be countersigned without a compliant certificate
- A premium audit that came back four figures higher than expected
- Adding a truck, a crew, or a state
“I just need a certificate. Can you send one and we can talk later?”
What is usually underneath that: They have been treated as a paperwork transaction before, and they expect the coverage conversation to be a sales pitch bolted onto an errand.
Send me the insurance requirements page from the contract and I will tell you what your current policy does not do.
What this usually turns into for The trade contractor
A starting point, not a package. What you end up carrying depends on the contracts you sign, the assets behind you, and what the underwriter says.
Business
The professional services firm
A dental practice, design studio, IT consultancy, accounting firm or engineering office. Two to twenty people, a client list, and a server full of other people’s data.
What sets the price: Headcount and the sensitivity of the records held, not square footage.
What usually goes wrong
- A general liability policy was bought years ago and quietly assumed to cover professional mistakes, which it does not
- A client contract requires cyber liability at a limit nobody has checked against the current policy
- The employee handbook and the EPLI policy have never been read against each other
What brings people in
- A new client contract with an insurance schedule attached
- A first employee, or a first firing
- A phishing email that nearly worked
“We already have general liability. Isn’t that the same thing?”
What is usually underneath that: Nobody has ever walked them through the boundary between bodily-injury liability and professional liability, so the two words sound like the same product.
Your general liability policy covers someone tripping in your lobby. It does not cover the advice you gave them. Those are two different policies.
What this usually turns into for The professional services firm
- Professional Liability (E&O)
- Cyber Liability
- Employment Practices (EPLI)
- Business Owner's Policy
- Workers' Compensation
A starting point, not a package. What you end up carrying depends on the contracts you sign, the assets behind you, and what the underwriter says.
Business
The restaurant or shop owner
One to three locations. A kitchen or a sales floor, a walk-in cooler, a delivery vehicle, and a staff roster that turns over.
What sets the price: Number of locations and whether alcohol is served.
What usually goes wrong
- Business interruption is in the policy but nobody has checked whether the limit matches a realistic closure
- Spoilage and equipment breakdown are usually endorsements, not automatic, and the walk-in is the most expensive thing in the building
- Staff drive their own cars on deliveries, which is a different exposure from the van outside
What brings people in
- A lease renewal with an insurance clause
- Adding a second location, a patio, or a liquor licence
- A slip-and-fall claim, or a neighbour’s
“Margins are thin enough. I need the cheapest policy that keeps the landlord happy.”
What is usually underneath that: 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.
If you closed for six weeks after a fire, how many weeks of that does your current policy actually pay for? That number is on the declarations page and most owners have never been shown it.
What this usually turns into for The restaurant or shop owner
A starting point, not a package. What you end up carrying depends on the contracts you sign, the assets behind you, and what the underwriter says.
Personal
The established household
Owns the house, runs two or three cars, may have a teenager on the policy, a boat or a camper, and enough equity to be worth suing for.
What sets the price: Total assets at risk, which is what sets the umbrella limit.
What usually goes wrong
- The renewal arrives higher every year and nobody re-shops it, because switching means starting over with a stranger
- Dwelling coverage was set at purchase and has never been revisited against construction costs
- State minimum liability limits are still in place under a household with real assets behind them
What brings people in
- A renewal increase with no claim behind it
- A teenage driver, a renovation, or a move
- A neighbour’s claim that got denied
“I have been with the same company for fifteen years. They look after me.”
What is usually underneath that: Loyalty feels like leverage. In most personal lines books it is the opposite — the longest-tenured policies are frequently the least competitively priced.
Bring me last year’s declarations page and this year’s. If the coverage did not change and the price did, I can usually tell you why in about ten minutes.
What this usually turns into for The established household
A starting point, not a package. What you end up carrying depends on the contracts you sign, the assets behind you, and what the underwriter says.
Life & Benefits
The small employer adding benefits
Five to a hundred employees, at the point where good people start leaving for a job with medical, and where the owner is uninsurable-by-accident to the business.
What sets the price: Enrolled headcount and whether the group has ever been underwritten before.
What usually goes wrong
- Benefits get chosen once and never revisited, and the renewal is accepted because re-marketing a group feels like a project
- Open enrolment is a PDF emailed to staff who do not read it, so the benefit is paid for and not valued
- There is no key-person or buy-sell cover, so an owner’s death is also a business continuity event
What brings people in
- Losing a hire to a company that offered medical
- Crossing an employee-count threshold
- A partner buying in, or wanting out
“We are too small for group benefits. Everyone just buys their own.”
What is usually underneath that: 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.
Tell me the last two people you lost and where they went. If either went somewhere with medical, this conversation pays for itself.
What this usually turns into for The small employer adding benefits
A starting point, not a package. What you end up carrying depends on the contracts you sign, the assets behind you, and what the underwriter says.
The other half of the answer
Who we are the wrong agency for.
Every agency has a list like this. Most of them keep it internal, and you find out where the edges are after you have moved your policies. Here is ours, in advance.
- Anyone outside the states we are licensed in
- Placing coverage without a licence in the client’s state is not a grey area. If you are moving to a state that is not on our list, we will say so on the first call rather than the last one.
- Long-haul trucking and large fleets
- It is a specialty market with its own carriers, its own filings, and its own claims practice. We do not have the appointments to do it well, and a generalist doing it badly is worse than a referral.
- A buyer whose only question is the number
- We re-shop every renewal, so we are not against price. But if the plan is to move every year for the cheapest premium regardless of coverage, a comparison site will serve you faster than we will, and we would rather say that than take the account and disappoint you.
- Anyone who wants a date moved or a fact left off
- Backdating a policy, understating payroll, or leaving a driver off an application is fraud, and it is the kind that surfaces at the claim. We will lose the account instead.
- Coverage that has to be in force this afternoon, on a risk nobody has seen
- Some binds are genuinely same-day. Many are not, and a rushed application is where the misrepresentation gets in. We would rather tell you the realistic timeline.
If you are in one of those, say so on the first call and we will point you at someone who does it properly. A referral costs us nothing and saves you a month.
These archetypes are composites. They describe the kinds of situation this agency is written to handle. They are not clients, not case studies, and not quotations from anyone — the sentences in quote marks are the objection as it is usually phrased, written by us. Greene Insurance is a fictional agency and has no clients to describe.
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.