How to Become an Insurance Agent the DCIAP Way
The choice to join an ‘agency group’ is not one that agents take lightly. However, what an ‘agency group’ can do for an agent/agency can be monumental for their success.
What DCIAP has done is take being apart of an ‘agency group’ to a new level solving the biggest problems agents have with Clusters and Aggregators.
Following we’ll be sharing a few of these things. Take a look at some of the things we’re offering, and then fill out the form and let’s have a conversation about how to become an insurance agent… (Click the Learn More button following each group to jump to the form)
Build Your Own Insurance Brand
The benefits of joining a large group are numerous, and usually come at the cost of losing the identity of your agency. Building a brand as an agency depends on two critical areas:
First is the level of customer service you give clients.
Second is the carrier contracts you obtain to service your client base.
While the contracts your agency obtains may dictate the business you can place, your service and connection to your client is what makes the difference.
This is why agents & agencies are jumping on our affiliate program… With access to our back-end support, you have the freedom to grow your agency and your brand the way you know best, while still having access to our extensive experience in the industry over the last 20 years.
No matter if your agency is three days old or a third generation agency our affiliate group allows you to take advantage of the large group advantages of:
- Higher commissions
- Carrier profit sharing
- Low production requirements, and
- Carrier contract acquisition, to name a few key things…
While everything runs through your agency. You’ll be building your brand.
100% Commissions
You read that right… You keep 100% of your commissions! I hope you realize how big of a deal this is! With DCIAP the more business you write the more you make because we don’t take 10 to 30% of the commissions like other ‘agency groups’ do. You Keep A Lot More Money
10% to 30% of the commissions is a lot of money, and could be very advantageous to supporting your growth plans. Let me show you how much money we’re talking about here.
The average carrier contract for both Personal Lines and Commercial lines is 15%. If you have a $1,000,000 book of business that’s $150,000 in commissions. Other ‘agency groups’ charge you between 10% to 30% of the commissions, or put into dollars, they’re keeping $15,000 to $45,000 for every $1,000,000 of business you write!
Even if you only have a $500,000 book of business, that’s $7,500 to $22,500 more money you’ll make with DCIAP. I’m sure we both can agree that this money would go a long ways to helping you grow your business along with helping you support your family.
A Different Approach to Building An Agency
Here again, we’re taking a different approach. We simply charge a minimal fee that is not commission based to be part of DCIAP, and we don’t increase it as you write more business.
Instead it’s a fixed flat fee for continued program administration.
By the way, most ‘agency groups’ not only take 10% to 30% of the commissions, they also charge a monthly administration fee.
I know, this is hard to believe that we pay you 100% of the commissions and that it’s out of the norm for ‘agency groups’ not to take a percentage of the business you write.
Let’s have a conversation and we’ll explain this in detail to you. We can also discuss the many other benefits of being part of DCIAP when we talk.
Better Production & Faster Growth
Another huge advantage to receiving 100% of the commissions is you’ll be able to grow your agency faster because you’ll be able to hire other producers much sooner.
By receiving 100% of the commissions you’ll be able to pay your producers a respectable commission to retain them to help you grow your agency.
Need help with the details and process of hiring producers? No problem, we’ll be glad to help!
Receiving 100% of the commissions is huge and opens up many opportunities to help you grow.
Have a conversation with us and we’ll not only discuss DCIAP, we’ll also discuss how if you’re a hard work how you can grow your agency much faster.
You’re Paid Directly By The Carrier
Another thing the agencies in our group greatly appreciate is the commissions earned are paid directly to you, the affiliate, for direct and sub-coded appointments. This also means you’re paid faster because there are no time consuming reports or commission statement submissions needed.
If you hire other producers this also allows you to pay them sooner. Everyone is happy!
Our Carrier Partners
CL Carriers
- Acuity
- Amerisafe
- AMIG
- Auto-Owners
- Berkshire Hathaway
- Berkshire Hathaway Guard
- Builders & Tradesmen
- C N A
- EMC
- Employers
- EverGuard
- First Comp
- Foremost
- Hanover
- Hartford
- Kemper Specialty
- Lancer
- Liberty Mutual
- MetLife
- Nationwide
- Philadelphia
- Pinnacol
- Progressive
- Secura
- Seneca
- Travelers
- United Fire Group
- USLI
PL Carriers
- ASI
- AMIG
- Auto-Owners
- Dairyland Auto
- Dairyland Cycle
- Encompass
- Foremost
- Hagerty
- Hartford (AARP)
- Kemper Preferred
- MetLife
- Nationwide
- Personal Umbrella
- Progressive
- Safeco
- Safeway
- The General
- Travelers
- USLI
Carrier Profit Sharing
All carriers have a high production requirement for profit sharing eligibility. Most start at $500,000 just to be eligible for the lowest tier of profit sharing.
If that’s not tough enough, not all profit sharing agreements are created equally. Each carrier has their own guidelines to just qualify for profit sharing and how much they pay out if you do.
Pretty consistently, among all carriers profit sharing is based upon two key things… 1) Written Premium, and 2) Loss Ratio. The more premium you write and the smaller your loss ratio the more bonus money you make.
Then, the more premium you earn the higher the percentage for your bonus money. Of course, along with this, the higher your loss ratio the lower the percentage for your bonus money. To maximize the bonus dollars you want a huge book of business and a low loss ratio.
This is where being apart of DCIAP can be very advantageous and profitable to your agency. By being a member:
You spread out the loss. A small agency could have just one loss that would cost them any bonus their premium level would allow. Every small agency is just one flood, one windstorm, one hail storm away from losing their bonuses. By spreading out the loss between many agencies it greatly reduces the loss ratio as a whole for the group. Where alone you may have too high of a loss ratio, as part of group you will likely still receive a bonus. The odds are far greater that you will.
DCIAP requires far less written premium to qualify for a bonus! Most carriers require at least $500,000 of written premium. DCIAP only requires $35,000 of written premium. This is yet another way to easily cover the DCIAP fees and putting a lot more into YOUR bank account.
Everyone is pooling their business together for higher profit sharing percentages.
This means bigger profit sharing bonuses.
With DCIAP, not only will you receive bonuses when on your own you wouldn’t have, you’re also receiving more bonus money because as a group we receive a higher percentage for the bonus earned.
It is very possible for you to receive 5 times bigger bonuses by being apart of DCIAP versus being on your own!
Carrier Contract Acquisition
Carriers love agencies who have a business model that supports a lot of “good” business being written.
Unlike a lot of Clusters and Aggregators who don’t have an interest in expanding their markets, we do want to increase ours. It’s smart business to open up new markets because it’s been proven that when you become the market specialist you write a whole lot more business.
To support our affiliates who are working a specific market, in the event we don’t have carriers who specialize in the specific market we’ll do the research to find the best carriers for that market. We are constantly diligently searching and expanding our carrier choices to support our affiliate partners. We keep our pulse on the landscape, listen to our affiliates, and search for markets that best fit the collective needs to ensure our affiliates have the best possible solutions to offer their clients.
Protection In Hard Markets
This point goes hand in hand with the above point. As markets get tighter due to poor profitability, carriers look for ways to cut costs and will drop agencies who aren’t profitable (high loss ratio’s) or who aren’t writing very much business with them. We see this happen all the time.
A traditional agency with less than $500,000 in premium with a carrier could easily be considered on the “chopping block” when the hard market comes. The advantage to being apart of our affiliates is you get the protection of the group in terms of premium requirements and profitability.
This gives you tremendous peace of mind knowing the carriers you’re working with and enjoy working with will always be available to you regardless to how much premium you’ve written with them when the market gets hard.
Direct/Sub-Coded Access With Low Production Requirements
Carrier appointments require a heavy commitment from an agency to just consider an appointment. These heavy commitments limit agencies in the number of markets they can obtain, which limits the types of business and amount of business they can write.
By yourself a $1,000,000 book an agency can sustain just two or possibly three carrier contracts. This is why it’s hard to have competitive carriers in many different market places which limits your ability to sell to more people!
That same $1,000,000 as a DCIAP affiliate could open up at least 15 (probably closer to 20) sub-coded appointments. This means you’ll to have many more carriers allowing you to be competitive in many more markets.
By joining our affiliate group your business stretches further and truly allows growth that would otherwise be stunted in the traditional agency set-up.
Commercial Lines Specialists
We Know How to Become an Insurance Agent
Many have told us we’re offering a huge advantage because of our strength and years of commercial lines insurance experience. Our business grew starting out as a commercial lines operation.
Important point: We have actual commercial lines experience! We don’t lead with personal lines hoping to build commercial lines because we know how to sell commercial lines policies directly to the consumer.
Our agency book is 70% CL and 30% PL which means we can actually help our affiliates:
- Have the right discussions about coverages with prospective businesses,
- Bring in the right carriers for the business type and coverages recommended, and
- Help you build a profitable book of business.
Who doesn’t love those big commission checks which can be earned from commercial accounts?
The reality is, one commercial account could easily be equivalent to 5 personal lines accounts. It’s no wonder agents love commercial lines.
Personal Lines Specialists
A commercial lines agent has a different mindset when looking at personal lines. Instead of seeing this piece as a commodity and hoping to just write a lot of business and then sitting back to see where the chips fall, we focus on placing the right clients with the right markets.
We don’t do this from a pricing structure. We do this from a coverage stand point. To be clear, we do realize that pricing in this realm is important. However, we also know that coverage matters too.
Because commercial lines is far more detailed in its nuances we transfer that same attention to detail over here. For example we seek out those carriers that offer uninsured motorist on the umbrella to give our affiliates a true choice when writing their business.
As you’ll learn when working with DCIAP, each carrier has market place strengths. You want to work these markets because it gives you the upper hand.
For example, one carrier may be very strong in writing high-end custom homes. These carriers who specialize in a market also tend to have special coverages other carriers don’t to support the market places they specialize in. This makes it really hard for other carriers to compete in this market place.
Being a member of DCIAP you’ll have access to all of our personal lines carriers .
Having said all of this, when you’re working with the right carrier for the specific market you are generally less money also because the carrier knows how to properly underwrite the business and is able to spread the risk out to many others in that same market place. All in all, everyone wins… The client is happy because they got the right coverages for their insurance needs, the client saved money and you developed another happy client who will brag about you with his friends.
DCIAP Is AGREAT Opportunity
Giving up 10 to 30% of your commissions to gain access to key carriers to make yourself far more competitive in the market place is a great deal. It would be an even better deal if you could also gain access to key commercial lines carriers and had commercial lines specialist at your fingertips to help you.
What if …
- You could gain access to key, highly competitive personal lines and commercial lines carriers, and
- You also had commercial lines specialist at your disposal to help you break into new markets, and
- You didn’t have to give up 10% to 30% of your commissions?
You’d really be set! You’d have the commissions needed to grow your agency and the carrier contracts to compete with anyone else toe-to-toe, and a support team to help make sure it’s you who closes the deal.
This is just the beginning of the DCIAP opportunity at hand. Now all you need to do is fill out the form to let us know you would like to have a conversation with us about DCIAP and learn what else we have to offer. I’m certain you’ll be impressed.
If you’re still not convinced, scroll down to see the 3 different programs we have available for the 3 different type agencies.