From Agency to Carrier and Back: A Journey Through Insurance

Welcome to another episode of the Agency Podcast, where we explore the forces shaping the future of insurance, discovering the latest trends, challenges, and innovation, shaping the future. I'm your host, Johnelee, Senior Marketing Manager, and I'm joined by my lovely co-host, Laura.

Laura is a key member of the Agenzee team, bringing extensive experience in the insurance field and keen insights into how insurtech is transforming our industry. She is with our special guest today, Laura Crompton in the hot and humid Orlando, Florida.

A little bit about Laura, our guest. She is the agency principal at Prepared Insurance. Throughout her career, she has been on the agency side, helping to produce, train, and develop sales leaders. She has also worked on the carrier side for over nine years, helping with sales teams, underwriting, product development, and claims. She understands this industry as a whole and feels very lucky for her experiences and is excited to share that.

with you all today. Hello Laura and Laura, how are you both doing today?

Doing well, thank you for having me.

Absolutely, thanks for joining us. So you both share your first names. Do you guys have anything else in common?

Last name initials.

We're both LCs.

Yes. So we did work together at a major carrier for over seven years and I was first to be hired. So I became LC1 and when we hired Laura, she became LC2 and she is my best bud. She has taught me so much in the insurance industry.

Yeah. Definitely fun to learn and grow together.

yes, definitely. Thank you. I appreciate it.

LC1 and LC2, I love it. So just to kick things off, I wanted to see if we could dive a little bit more up on your background, Laura Crumpton or LC2. Can you give us a little bit more details? How long have you been in the industry and what type of insurance do you specialize in, for example?

Sure. Yeah. I've been in the insurance world for about 16 years now, both on the agency side and like you mentioned on the carrier side. when I first started on the agency side, we did work in an agency that sold insurance in about 46 different states. And it was all over the phone. So you could imagine how difficult that was. I had the opportunity to learn how to be a producer.

I had the opportunity to then grow throughout the company, becoming a team leader, a performance manager, and eventually a managing partner, which was very, very exciting. I got to coach and develop a lot of young insurance agents, especially on the personal line side. So home, auto, boat, umbrella. Then I decided to move on over to the carrier side where I learned how to be a marketing rep. So that was definitely different and challenging, but loved it.

Then when I moved to the company that LC one and I worked together at, eventually became a regional sales manager, over the Carolinas and Florida. So that was definitely exciting to have my own team and coach and develop marketing reps again. And also really diving into the nuts of bolts of what a carrier actually does, you know, and get really involved in the underwriting, get really involved in claims, handling, marketing, licensing even, everything that has to do.

Exactly, You were there every step of the way

Yes

When we onboarded a new agency. You were helping me get ENO, you were helping me get licenses, making sure that everybody was appointed.

Yeah

You had your feet in every place you could.

It's definitely eye-opening and it helps me now back on the agency side, especially as an agency principal.

I know what goes into being a carrier. So Prepared Insurance Agency specializes in all PNC plus life insurance, any personal lines, commercial, and then also life insurance. What's cool about us is that with my expertise on the carrier side, I know how to field underwrite what the carriers actually want. You know, sometimes they're going to be like, unfortunately, we don't have a place to put this risk. We're going to have to let it walk.

Or, you know, I can call a carrier and be like, you're going to want this and this is why. I do like the fact that I have the opportunity to be able to do that. And that, I do have friends at the different carriers that understand how I work. You know, what I think is a good risk because they've taught me what a good risk is. So I could be like, Hey.

I don't see anything wrong with this, but maybe the system is kicking it. Let's talk about it. Let's vet it out.

You brought up the carrier side of things. I wanted to cover an essential topic for new agencies. Laura, how does the new agency get a direct carrier appointment?

In this day and age, it is really difficult. If you don't have connections, if you don't know somebody, it is really difficult. So I'm sure everybody knows.

How hard the market has been in the insurance world across the United States, not just in Florida, the Carolinas or the Southeast, I mean, everywhere. So without going towards some type of other broker or some type of, SIA group, or, you know, we were talking a little earlier about like a WeInsure,

It's definitely difficult to get a direct appointment. I think the carriers are kind of loosening up a little bit, but a lot of carriers are still on an appointment freeze. And then of course you have to promise a commitment. I mean, starting out from scratch, it's hard to say, hey, I can give you 250,000 in premium the first year, because you don't know.

Yeah, I remember when we were working at our carrier together, at first we didn't have that commitment. But I've noticed and talking to other agencies and other carriers in what I do now, they're seriously stepping up that requirement because they have costs that they have to cover that they cannot get reimbursed for because the state won't let them. So that's another way to work around that.

Yeah, either you're have a premium requirement or a PIF requirement. So it's like, hey, I need you to sell 10 policies a month for me,

Otherwise, we're going to have to have some hard conversations. you know, picking carriers that you match up for your target market for what your want to sell, what your niche market is going to be, it's going to be ideal. But, you know, stick at it, keep annoying them, trying to get that appointment. But don't promise something you can't.

Those are all very good tips. Laura or LC1 brought up something that I wanted to dig in a little bit more as far as when you guys were in the carrier side of things and you guys have in the industry for a very long time. Have you seen any significant shifts? What's your perspective?

Yeah, I'll take that one. So when I first got into insurance in 2008, it was definitely a hard market, believe it or not.

And then I've seen it come cyclical where, you know, over the next couple of years, mortgage rates were down. So everyone was refining. So and insurance companies were hungry for market shares. So was like boom, boom, boom. Agencies built millions of dollars in books because everybody, once you did a refi, you needed to go ahead and re-shop your insurance. Right. So people were making a lot of money and it was fantastic.

And then the past couple years, got real hard again. People decided or carriers decided that they didn't want as much market share. know, unfortunately, there was a lot of non renewals, which was very difficult with all the storms and everything that was going on. Reinsurance rates went up. therefore insurance carrier rates had to go up. Therefore our home insurance rates had to go up. So it was very difficult, but

They're saying, knock on wood, this was pre-Hurricane Milton. I don't know if y'all know, but Hurricane Milton is expected to be like a 30 to $50 billion storm. So, but pre-Hurricane Milton, we were expecting insurance rates to lay flat for 2025. Fingers crossed that actually happens, but we don't know. We'll have to see what happens after the assessment from Hurricane Milton. So, I mean, just with natural disasters,

It is what it is, right? Any storm within the United States is going to affect even our rates here in Florida, our rates in North Carolina, our rates in California. You know, it's because the reinsurers insure everywhere.

Exactly. Reinsurance, you you write in more than one state, the carrier's reinsurance is going to have to cover all of those states, not just one specific state.

But one thing that I have noticed is that carriers are still use spreadsheets to manage their licenses and appointments. You know, it's just, it's ridiculous. We're in 2024, why are we not moving into automation at all? I mean, it's just, that's why I'm so gray. You see all these gray hairs. I mean, 10 years at a major carrier and running everything through a spreadsheet. There's just gotta be a better way. You know, how is automation helping your business?

Leveraging technology is amazing. So we like to touch our customers several times, it's impossible. There's several times a year, but it's impossible to do that. Have, you know, my producers or my CSRs or account managers go ahead and send emails every time somebody has a birthday. For 55 days prior to the effective date, Hey, do you want us to shop your renewal? We're going to shop your renewal. It went up. We'll give you a call.

So we've been able to automate all of that through our CRM. We send out several emails. Also, I do have a wonderful marketing person that helps me out with Mailchimp. you know, when hurricane comes, we definitely send emails like, be prepared, because you already got prepared. So let's be prepared. Here's your policy number. Here's the claims number. Should you need anything, you can call them direct. You can call us, you know, just want to let you know we're here for you. So that part of automation has been absolutely fantastic for us.

I can imagine you guys automating the appointment process. I mean, I'll tell you when we get appointed with carriers, you can see the difference of I plug in all the information that we need and boom, three days later, you get a login after, know, we're approved and everything. Some carriers, it takes four weeks because everything is manual, you know? I'm excited for you guys to automate that part of getting appointed for insurance.