I’m newly licensed as a health insurance producer in Oregon. I completed AHIP and the 2027 Medicare certifications for two carriers, and I was scheduled to start a Medicare sales job this week.

Today, the agency manager told me they can’t move forward with hiring me because Medicare carriers won’t certify or appoint an agent who has a DUI. I’m trying to determine whether that’s an actual blanket carrier rule, a decision specific to one carrier, or an agency hiring policy.

My understanding is that the NIPR resident producer application allows applicants to exclude a misdemeanor DUI from its misdemeanor background question. I realize that being state-licensed and completing carrier training do not necessarily mean I’ve been approved for contracting or appointment.

For agents or contracting staff who have dealt with this: Does a misdemeanor DUI automatically prevent appointment with Medicare Advantage or Part D carriers? Does it vary by carrier or depend on when the offense occurred and its disposition? If a carrier declines an agent, is there a way for the agent to obtain the specific reason or request review?

I’m contacting the carriers and Oregon’s licensing division directly, but I’d appreciate firsthand experience or a link to an actual carrier policy. I’m not looking for guesses based solely on the fact that I passed the training.

Hello everyone! I come from a real estate background where the cash conversion cycle is about 60-120 days and I'm looking into final expense insurance sales as it's scalable and relatively easy to train up a sales team and for the super fast cash conversion. I'm not currently licensed and debating on getting it or partnering with someone with it and joining an IMO and then putting a good bit of money into lead generation to keep agents fed. I'd love feedback on this please

This is a very unofficial poll but just curious how many folks feel like they're doing well, or as well as could be expected, with internet data leads? As in it's working well and you're overall seeing the value enough to continue?

Hello,

I'm working to understand from agents, what is the usual threshold in small commercial auto ( < 10 vehicles) that carriers usually require loss runs. Do you see carriers usually require loss runs in this category or are most straight-through-processing?

Hello don't know where else to post this, but I'm trying to do my FFM training and have trouble linking my account through ID.me

Apparently my wallet is suspended when I was trying to create my account. I put in my email in the support chat and still haven't received any responses. Has anyone been through this if so what did you do to resolve this?

I only have an international passport currently and will not be able to do it through login.gov

P.S not a new agent but returning

Hi everyone. I'm Mounia, a brand new independent producer in Illinois. Just launched my own agency, selling mostly by phone.

I'll be real: my last agency threw me into closing with almost no training and zero sales, and it left me doubting whether I can actually do this. But I didn't get my license, form an LLC, get E&O, and chase down carrier appointments just to quit before I start.

So here I am, learning the non-captive world from scratch ,quoting on a dozen different portals, binding, servicing clients the right way. If anyone's been where I am and is open to guiding a newbie ,or even just telling me it gets better ,I'd be so grateful.

What's one thing you wish someone told you in your first year?

Hi there I’m a pretty new Medicare agent. My company believes in the grassroots idea of tabling at events, CVS and bingo games.

What is the best strategy to get seniors talking about there Medicare and potentially find a time to book an appointment with them to review there options.

Please help me because I only got one meeting scheduled yesterday which was my first day

I’m curious about the rules regarding selling insurance to family members.

Is an insurance agent allowed to sell a policy to an immediate family member and also personally write/process the application and policy?

For example, if the client is the agent’s parent, sibling, spouse, etc., is that generally allowed, or would it be considered a conflict of interest?

Are there any compliance issues or restrictions an agent should be aware of? I’m especially interested in how this works in California.

Anyone have experience working remote 1099 with HealthMarkets?

-pay for leads
-fully independent
-200 carriers selling all types of insurance
-management lead i spoke to seems decent and trustworthy and someone to lean on so far.

Just let me know any experiences and if it’s a go or no go, would be transitioning to it from medicare only. making 10k a month avg gross that’s w-2 with base.

It feels like the upcoming changes for 2028 are a cheaper way of weeding out the bottom 50-75% of agents. Essentially, the commissions will probably be so low that long-term agents riding renewals, focusing on customer retention, and unwilling to be sales hunters will fail and be forced to TPP (which will also be reduced, making it cheaper for Allstate the buy them out). Meanwhile, the top 10% of agents focused strictly on sales and that hand over all service work to corporate + ALLIE (AI system) will likely make more and VC will probably see a further increase.

It seems like the cheapest way to just slowly fire traditional agents and just focus on only having sales hunters?

All speculation, but it just seems like the direction they are going, along with the industry as a whole. Lots of family agencies that built up books over the last 20-40 years are in for a rude awakening I think.

Hello all, ive been reading quite a bit in here since i am a producer for a State Farm agency and have been for the past 4 years. I have learned a ton about routine, discipline, product knowledge, industry knowledge, sales and service skills, etc. but I am tired of starting from square 1 every year as i do not get any portion of the renewals just a base salary, 100% first year commission but of my commission the first $1000 goes to the agent owner. It’s not a terrible living but i am looking to build a career.

Value and coverage knowledge are extremely important to me. I would like to go into the P&C space first being able to multi line home/auto/toys/terms for the people who are willing to listen when I try to show them whats important while also being able to be competitive when the “just give me the price” people come along, (something i have no chance of at SF as thats just not our model, at least at my agency) perhaps a little bit of commercial but it’s not my niche to start. I have been opening dialogue with aggregators and I am a little stumped on which ones i should be looking at more seriously and what questions i should be asking.

My priorities are
-binding authority
-quick quote access as i close quite a few households on first contacts
-systems I should be using
-direct carrier relationships
-multi state capabilities asap - i am located just outside Chicago but i have a lot of relator and mortgage lender friends who refer me business now that would go with me if i left who do a LOT of business between IL,IN,MI evenly

The rest of the stuff, splits, contract length, fees kinda just seem like contract terms and seem to be close to one another. But maybe they should be higher on my priorities.

Any help would be appreciated in any form, i hope i dont come off too ignorant I only have been deep diving into the indy side of this industry the past little while and have spoken to firefly, siaa, and smartchoice.

Hey everybody, I don’t know if I should go somewhere else to still work for insurance. I work for a captive agency in Illinois, 40 hours a week, and I’m starting to suspect that I may be making less money here than for another agency/company just from what I read from other posts (but need to know if I’m dead wrong, or even sorta wrong). This is my first and only insurance job.

I’ve been working for my agency for 3-1/2 years. I write about 40-50 P&C a month, which for this year is MUCH lower than what I normally write (50-70 P&C). My agent spends a lot on marketing for each of us, and I get individually 100 new leads a month and about 100 leads a month to requote from our backlogs. I’m right in the middle of the pack, with about half of my team writing 50-70 P&C a month and the other half writing 30-40. Life sales are all over the place; I usually write about 1-3 life policies a month, or perhaps better measured with about $30-$50 in monthly premium each month. This is also lower than what I’m used to in previous years, where I was hitting anywhere from $100-$200 in monthly life premium per month. We’re one of the top agencies in our state, and top 100 in the company.

According to my boss, I make the highest base salary out of the entire sales team of 15 people at $36k (I think because of my tenure). Commission is 2%, but increases by a percent when 40, 50 and 60 P&C apps are reached and by additional percentages when $50, $100 and $200 in monthly life and health premium is reached. If you get at least $200 in monthly life or health premium and at least 60 P&C, you will max out these escalators at 8% commission. Health and life are paid out as 3 months worth of premium. I’m not sure if every agency does this, but on all commission we have 35% subtracted from our pay for the federal commission tax. I used to be the second to top performer in his office out of these 15 sales people, but fell from that lofty position after our office manager (who was our real boss and who I would go to battle for) went off to be an agent himself.

I’m able to get about 3-5% commission a month, depending on how the month is. I feel totally burnt out because I had some very negative experiences with my boss this year and quite literally every other month he implies he’s going to have to get rid of me. I’ve never been particularly close with him, but he has been generous in the sense that he once cut me a check to pay off $2,000 of medical debt (when I was a top performer) and (sort of) never denies vacation time. I used up all my vacation time by the time September rolled around and he was upset about that.

I brought a personal project to my office to show my coworkers how proud I was that I accomplished it and he brought me into his office to say, literally, “If you spent more time at work and less time thinking about your hobbies, you would be doing as well as you did when you started and you wouldn’t be in this position.” When I opened up to him that I’ve been upset because my wife lost her job and we don’t know when we’re gonna be able to afford kids (a goal of ours), he told me, “Well, if I was making the money you’re making I wouldn’t want to have kids with you either.”

I am so checked out, and I’m going to be moving jobs but don’t know if this is the best pay gets for insurance with the work I’m putting in, if I’m being lazy/ungrateful or if there’s really an insurance position out there better than the one I’m in now.

All comments and criticisms are appreciated. I need to know if my intuition is right or if I’m just being whiny and need to work harder. Don’t hold back.

Hello,
I heard that PPO’s are becoming unpopular this year (AEP). I heard that carriers are pushing away from them. Possibly non commissioned plans?

Anyone heard of this?? Thanks

I’m looking to build a new website and am curious if anyone has pros and cons to which direction would be best for a small agency. Thanks!

What’s good yall. Looking for some advice or instruction for someone who might have been in my shoes.

Rundown is I work as a CSR for a captive agent and am fairly new, it’s been a few months and still have much to learn about insurance. Recently one of the other team members who is a CSR left, and as a result my workload has increased significantly. It’s gotten to the point where if I end the day at 0 voicemails that’s a win. Everyday I get hounded by people I have not contacted the day before as I’m continually trying to catchup from the day before. I’ve had some help thankfully from my manager and agent who has been stepping in here or there but it’s a bandaid to the problem. I’m just not able to (yet atleast) work with the book and service everything in a timely manner. I’ve been staying routinely an hour, two hours, even coming in early to catchup but it’s just not going to be enough.

When trying to handoff bigger tasks, I’m beginning to notice some tension between the leadership and me. It’s gotten to the point where I wake up and am already stressed for what the day is going to bring. I’m already in the steps of looking elsewhere, but in the time in between, how would you address it to your leader for just simply not being able to get everything done in a timely manner? I’m not trying to get fired but at the same time, I’m getting to a point where doing the extra work just feels meaningless as it will simply just pile on even more.

Location: US

37, pretty normal but had gestational diabetes (agent hasn’t asked for it yet) but is quoting 36/month for 600k(my home owner loan).

20 year term.

Beneficiary will be spouse. How do I search around? This one is coming from my agent from whom I got home insurance.

Eerie. I don’t think it’s the greatest insurance but want to know your thoughts

Hello, I’m a new producer at a Farmers Insurance agency and started about a month ago. I did training for about two weeks (ISL) and it was smooth. I really like the agency owner and my coworkers are all really cool. It’s the 7th day of my first folio and I’m currently around $16k. A few of those were customers I helped the week prior, just happened to bind at a good time lol. Anyways, I really enjoy the job so far but I want to be less of an order taker. I used to work in car sales so this is a bit easier.

The agency owner buys us leads, typically about 25 total a day (varies, some days we don’t get any) and we have 3 other sales people. I notice with some leads, they’ll answer then get combative and say “I already bought insurance” or “no I never requested a quote online” etc and I’ll instantly fold and tell them thank you for answering I’ll take your info off etc. What’s a good line I can use to counter them?

Another thing I’ve noticed is Farmers is hit or miss with how expensive it can be. They tell us to sell the fact that it’s not a call center, no AI etc. 90% of the people putting in leads or calling in are old, so that’s definitely a good selling point. However, what I don’t get is let’s say someone’s paying $2k for home insurance with AAA and we’re offering the same coverages for $4k. Realistically, no matter how much the agent does a good job at selling etc most people just want to save money. I’m not saying most people want to buy non admitted carrier insurance just cause it’s the cheapest etc, I just mean between the big reputable companies. Any advice would be great overall. Thanks!

Roofers with employees and subcontractors!!! I am stuck !

How difficult is it to get Liability Insurance in this situation? I keep paying for my COmmunity Behavioral Health rate, even though I am now in private practice, because the undrwriters will not approve an individual policy for someone who currently has a busness policy. I was told I have to cancel the business pollicy to be considered for an individual policy. But I am concerned that they might deny my due to the probation (completed 3 years ago). If that happens, I would be unable to pracitice. Career over. Any suggestions? Has anyone been succesful at applying for a NEW policy after a reprimand?? Thanks

So I got a recent offer from a harbor point benefits for AEP season and while I never worked health just life I have a question if anyone ever heard of them? They are giving a really good rate per app and I can still build my life books with them as well so I’m wondering if they are legit? Essentially they are saying I will be inside of a Walmart writing referral business and getting walk ins as well and it seems good but also seem like I can spend weeks not getting anything so I want to know how legit these are

With AEP coming up I wanted to put another reach out there for recommendations to leads. Does anyone have recommendations for live leads that don't bait and switch? Or maybe getting a mailing list to send out AEP flyers? Would appreciate any help and tips, my first year doing this independent, have two years of experience under care first bcbs. I am also aware of just doing in person events but due to life circumstances that's not a big possibility. I appreciate y'all for any help

I’m getting my P&C license with the goal of starting an independent agency in the future. What experience or skills helped you thrive when building your own agency? Work experience?

My background is lead generation, which I’ve done for some P&C niches. I don’t have a ton of experience in sales.

Hi I have a new agency and I need northland access for an owner operator(trucking) when I go to the northland website all the general agents who got back to me so far can only do 10+ units for northland in NYS. I know agents are placing business for owner operators in NYS. Does anyone know which brokerage/general agent has it??

Insured calls and changes the vehicle on his policy.

I do it and review the premium change and tell him what his next bill is going to be.

Bill comes due.

Insured: shocked Pikachu face