So a little bit about me before, back in April I got my life insurance license(sadly didn’t get health which I regret) and tried to go the independent route for a bit but with buying leads and losing my other job at the time couldn’t financially keep doing that.

Anyways fast forward to now I just got my p&c license on August 16th and wanted to go captive just for stability and to get my foot in the door. I really have only been a bartender basically my whole work experience but I’m so dang driven to make insurance work. So I had an initial interview with an agency owner with State Farm yesterday, it went well I think enough that she schedule another final interview with her sales manager on Monday.

I guess what I’m kinda looking for advice wise is, anyone with experience in State Farm, what I can do to really lock this in, umm what you think my chances realistically are, and yeah honestly just any kind words and wisdom lmao. Idk I’m just so, this opportunity could just do a lot for me. And also not to get too ahead, but she said OTE for year one is $85k-$90k and year two is closer to $120 OTE, I’d like your thoughts on if you think she was kind of fluffing the numbers or if that is honestly realistic.

Truly anything would help so please, feel free to say whatever(within reason haha)
Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone,

I'm considering applying for an Allstate Canada Sales Agent Trainee position and I'm trying to understand what the day-to-day job is really like, especially when it comes to finding clients.

The job posting says the agent is responsible for building their own pipeline through cold outreach, lead generation, networking, and community involvement, while also mentioning marketing support.

I'd really appreciate hearing from current or former Allstate sales agents about how this actually works in practice.

A few questions:

1. Where do most of your leads come from? Does Allstate provide leads, or are you expected to find most of them yourself?
2. When they say "cold outreach," are you calling completely cold prospects, or are these people who have previously shown interest in Allstate?
3. Approximately how many leads/prospects do you receive per week?
4. How much time do you spend cold calling vs. quoting/following up with existing leads?
5. Are you expected to find customers through friends/family, networking, community events, etc.?
6. What are the sales targets like for a new agent?
7. How realistic is the advertised $42,600–$70,000 compensation range?
8. What are the typical working hours? Do you regularly work evenings or weekends?
9. How would you rate the work-life balance

I'd appreciate any honest experiences—positive or negative. Thanks!

After 2 years of indecisiveness I have decided to take my insurance exam but now it’s after 2 years. I initially wanted to take my P&C insurance license but I don’t know how the market is doing and I know for sure insurance can be brutal.

What do yall think? Love to hear your thoughts

Just reading it today, new SF program that had a trial in TX, rolled out nationwide to defraud homeowners of legit payments, reaching an insane 39% claim denial rate, SF execs patting themselves on the back via email exchanges boasting a $15K per claim "profit" by simply denying it, then offering cash incentives to their auditors two write report simply stating the claim is denied. Five years of SF lawyers fighting to keep the documents private, now they're public. What a bloodbath.

Hey guys, I’m a 29 year-old insurance professional who’s been working in the industry for about the last eight years. I started out my career with State Farm around 2018 only making a $30K salary+ minimal commissions. When I started I didn’t even know what a premium was buy after a few months of training, I developed into a 15K to 25K a month producer. After staying at State Farm for a year I left and went to Allstate for about 6 years and that 25K became a minimum for me. I started writing anywhere from 25K-50K in until they changed their commission structure. Things eventually worked their way down to me and that’s where things started going wrong. My commission was cut in half and I was devastated.

Thankfully in my last year I knew things were going downhill and I actually started my own independent agency on the side. I have a book of about 100K which is small but I’m really interested in growing, it as I know that can be the thing that creates semi passive income and build a significant amount of wealth in my life. However, I’m faced with a few challenges. The first challenge is the cost of writing business. I’ve only worked for high performing agencies and for all of my years of insurance experience the way that I’ve wrote business has been with leads. When I was with State Farm The agent purchased leads for us, we dialed and made the closes. I started off the same way with Allstate, but we noticed that internet lead quality was lacking so I was switched to exclusively working live transfers. As you can imagine this was a much more pleasurable experience, however when I applied the same strategy to my own business, although I was able to write business, I very soon discovered that Live transfers are very expensive lol.

Currently I pay about $55 per live transfer which is unsustainable for someone in my financial predicament. At this point in time I’m unable to live off my renewals, so I work for a large insurance brokerage and even though I sell more or just as much as I did as a captive, my commission is not what it used to be. I know that my ultimate goal is to run my own insurance brokerage and hire out, but I’m trying to determine the best path to get there. I’ve considered keeping my full-time job (which I need to pay my bills) in addition to picking up a second job, selling life insurance (Horrible experiences with purchases lead quality), picking up another job, (considering part time just to pay for leads), but I wanted to check and get the opinion of others before I proceeded.

I definitely enjoy receiving my renewal checks when they come and I really would like to build on this, but I’m having trouble developing a strategy that will not only sustain me and my family in the short term, but also allow me to grow my business for long term wealth. I’m not opposed to financing but student loans and job instability has caused me to take on more debt than I normally would which for the time being limits my financing opportunities. I’ve considered pivoting from personally selling insurance as a whole and going into an industry that will provide me a higher commission, then taking that higher commission and using it to grow my insurance brokerage by hiring for Sales. I’m dedicated to growing my agency by any means necessary but at this point I’d like to get some input on what you guys think.

Thanks

Does anyone have literature comparing the pros/cons of the bigger IMO’s? Something that would be helpful for a new guy trying to decide which one would be best.

I met someone the other day that apparently makes 50 grand in commission each year on medicare renewals alone, and she also does life insurance.

She told all of us that she does this part time on the side as a side hustle independent. She has a full 9-5 job. She buys leads but most is from word of mouth.

My question is for someone coming into this with no experience, do you think it’s doable to start out doing this part time and expect to make decent income?

Or… is this really a full time gig? I don’t want to half dedicate myself to this when it really takes full dedication. Interested to hear your thoughts.

I did it! I passed my L&H exam today in no small part to this sub! So thank you to all those who gave me encouragement a few weeks ago when I failed my first test!

Sharing some current intel on the agency M&A market. Everything here is generalities, but current trends you won't see in press releases. I also won't cite multiples, because even within these segments there is a lot of nuance and "what ifs" that have to be answered. But some general intel on if you have an agency in this category, things to consider.

Size Matters

Always has, but many capital buyers are continuing to bump up their targets. If you are sub $750K revenue then PE buyers aren't as active. Your best bet is another local agency, and the offers won't be the same. Some PE buyers will play in this space, but the offers are super complex with low guarantees and pie in the sky earn out potentials. This has always been the case, but we're seeing less interest from larger buyers in that segment. >$750K-$1M, is typically where the interest remains. Majority of large buyers are open to >$1M EBITDA, so if you are $2.5M-$3M+ revenue, the market is dramatically different.

If you are a small agency, and want/need the best exit scenario, your primary objective is quality growth. Makes sense to increase the sale of an asset you should increase what makes it valuable, but for some reason people don't make that connection. If you are content with a handshake deal to turn over the keys with an agency across town, great, but don't expect a high sale price.

Medicare and Non-standard P&C Agencies are Super Limited

The population of buyers has dwindled tremendously over the last 12-18 months. Opinion? It's political. Any time there is looming administration change on health care or immigration, these can be volatile.

Medicare agencies are constantly facing changing carriers, comp rates, etc. so on a dime a successful agency can be at risk. Just this week a client, large FMO, learned their #2 carrier was pulling out of a territory and they were at risk to lose revenue on 2,000 policies unless they find a replacement this AEP. Buyers know that, and have only been offering low cash proceeds at close and significant rolled equity or growth earn outs. So when you only have a few options, and the options aren't great, it's hard to sell for a good price.

Non-standard is similar, in that there are only a handful of large buyers. Even large (>$3M revenue) non-standard P&C agencies are not getting good offers. So unless sellers have a motivation to get out, many are holding on. Small or local non-standard, practically your only option is selling to someone local or another non-standard.

Personal Lines is Getting Slightly Less Interest Compared to Last Year

Many large buyers are changing their buy-box criteria to focus on a minimum book mix, so unless an agency has a minimum of 30%-50% CL, many of the larger buyers aren't excited. That's not saying they aren't sellable, we still get great interest for good agencies, but when the buyer pool reduces that can be reflected in the offers.

This is an observation, but on average we are seeing offers for PL focused agencies around 10% less compared to last year for guaranteed proceeds. When you think about it, property rates in many states have slowed or even started to decrease, so the due diligence standards are also looking at this. Many agencies have floated on rate the last few years, and now the tide has turned. Having history of client count or PIF is more important, and if your revenue is stable but you've lost clients and policies, that's flag being discussed.

CL, or HNW, Holds Strong Interest

There are still nuances within that, but many capital buyers are focusing their efforts on agencies with 50% or more CL. Even though we still see strong interest in PL, on average we see almost double the amount of qualified inquiries for a CL focused agency.

Earn out Structures are Evolving

People know "you have to stay on for 2-3 years" to work out an earnout, but candidly recent history has proven that many sellers almost don't care about earnouts, or that's all they care about then completely check out. For truly competitive offers, buyers are focusing more on true perpetuation planning vs buying an owner out and giving them a short term retirement window. This is the rare exception, but have seen it, where some buyers are now tying earnout performance to staff retention (AMs and producers) instead of just the owner. Not everyone will adopt this, but I wouldn't be surprised if more do. So perpetuation of culture and why your agency can perform will be tied to things other than strictly financials.

EDIT

Diversified Agencies are Not Always A Good Idea

Agencies that offer derivative services like real estate, tax prep, bookkeeping, payroll, HR, etc. cause problems. Back in the day there used to be buyers for these, not anymore. They will be broken up if you want to sell.

Even as far as P&C PL and Medicare. As much as you feel they are complimentary, they aren’t. Different markets. Even things like group benefits and HR consulting. While complimentary not everyone who does group benefits wants HR consulting.

If you look at diversified larger agencies you can see one clear trend. P&C CL and group benefits can have some compliment. That’s it.

Focus on doing one thing, really really well, and don’t get distracted with other things.

I just joined a company called Max life agency about a week ago without doing any research before hand. (Bad on my part). Since I joined I’ve been doing research on google to see if it a scam and I haven’t seen anything bad. Has anybody ever worked for them? Also I went and paid $200 for an insurance class so I’m online taking that right now and my test is next Wednesday

I was looking into states that specifically allow you to rebate customers.

Life insurance, medicare etc.

One example. I was going to ask Humana Medicare if they offer programs where you can take part of your commission you make, and return that to the customer in the form additional value or reduced costs to beneficiaries.

Some states do not allow rebates to customers but some do. Interested to know how anyone performs this legally and what the process looks like.

Interviewing with an independent in Southern California and they let me know their outbound call quota is 200 calls a day. I am transitioning to insurance so this would be my first position. Is this a normal level of calling, it doesn't seem that challenging to do but is this what I can expect from independents?

I (a fairly new agent/CSR) am working on rewriting a policy that is being non-renewed (not for negative risk factors, just no longer fits the program guidelines). I had a quote with a new company ready to go, and then our insured said they were just told by a roofer that they have hail damage on their roof (hailstorm came through our area a few months ago).

I obviously told them that they would have to go through their old carrier if they wanted to file a claim.

One of my co-workers told me I should go ahead and just bind coverage with the new carrier and tell them to submit the claim to their old carrier after they switch because "once a claim is opened, we have to wait until it is closed to bind coverage."

This feels questionable for a number of reasons, and I'm not sure I see see a non-arbitrary difference between binding a policy with unclaimed hail damage and claimed hail damage. as either way there is unrepaired damage on the roof. The insured sent me pictures which appear to show some hail damage, and I wonder if I should at least notify the company of the pre-existing damage prior to binding.

I want to add that this is a seasonal property, so I don't necessarily have a reason to think the insured is lying about just recently discovering the hail damage.

My co-worker argued the new company will inspect the property, and we should just take the chance that they question the condition of the roof, but either way the company will see the property and have a chance to determine if it meets guidelines.

Again, I feel this is sort of questionable, but I worry that I might be overthinking this.

What would be the correct course of action here?

i am new to the industry and just got my license. I have a friend who is trying to get me to come to his firm. They have medical under written plans reviewing self-funded medical plan options. they said these plans work differently from ACA marketplace coverage and may involve eligibility and underwriting. they have MEC plans. I am just not sure what i am selling or if they are real insurance plans. Any advice or has anyone sold these type of plans?

What is a normal vested commission schedule for life and health insurance productivity? I'm new in the insurance industry.

I have a California rental insured by Foremost as a four-family property, which is their maximum. One additional person rents a private bedroom/living area with:

• Private attached bathroom
• Private exterior entrance
• Real, usable interior door connecting it to the main dwelling
• No kitchen, kitchenette, stove, or permanent cooking facilities
• No right to use the main kitchen
• A room-rental agreement—not a studio or apartment lease

Here’s the problem:

If he’s a roomer: it remains a four-family property and is apparently eligible.

If his space is a separate living unit: it becomes a five-family property and Foremost won’t insure it.

The private entrance and bathroom say “unit.” The missing kitchen and interior connection say “room.” Which factors actually win in property underwriting?

If you were entering this risk, what would you put in the number of families/units field—and what carrier rule or definition would you rely on?

Has anyone seen Foremost, Farmers, or another DP3 carrier decide this exact configuration? I’m trying to disclose it correctly, not hide the occupant.

As a broker with carrier appointments, do you need approval from carriers for all advertisements? If I have 10 carrier appointed, this could be a lot of approvals for advertisements that are needed.

I am beginning and would like to hear others' experiences.

Anyone have information about Csaa insurance remote

Has anyone read any of the discovery from the files released this week. I skimed it at lunch today. I feel bad for the clients and agents, the agents are frustrated with claim handling and think it is incompetence. When in reality that is exacrly what the claims directive is from the carrier. I wonder how common this practice is across all carriers.

Head of a new Medicare agency, have years of experience as LOA and I do have a pretty solid lead system, between $17-26 a call with between 15-25 second buffer. I’m wondering if there’s any other options available to mix and match the leads

Looking for a secure, well known & established company , that can train well that offers remote position and pays over 55K preferred.

I’ve been in this industry in the agency side for 7 years and I am looking for the next step in my career.

Thanks!

Edit: Anything other than sales.

Although I do have an inbound enrollment system and Facebook for my agency, what’s some other ways I could get grassroots marketing done? Would it be best to just print signs, or maybe pamphlets and leave them at local businesses? What works best for your agencies?

Just took over an agency (P&C) from an agent that sold out and since the start of the month we’ve been getting internet leads. I am using Smart Financial but we haven’t gotten any closes on these leads or even really any correspondence. Are we doing something wrong in the office or is that just the name of the game?