Your insurance needs are not something you should take lightly. Ideally, you should have a qualified professional in the process of selecting the best products to protect your interests. When you want to talk to a professional, you could go with a captive insurance agent or an independent insurance agent, but choosing is not always easy.
How to Choose Between a Captive and an Independent Insurance Agent?
Making decisions is always tough. Whether you're just getting ready to start looking after your insurance needs or want to work with an insurance professional on updating or expanding your coverage, deciding who to do business with comes down to understanding your options.
When you need to talk with an insurance agent, you can take one of two roads: captive or independent. Sure, you could do things online too, but the truth is, there is nothing quite like the personalized service of a one-on-one conversation. So, how do you choose who comes with you on your insurance journey? Let's take a look at your options:
Captive Agent
An insurance agent that represents strictly one insurance company, and who can only sell insurance from that company, is best known as a captive insurance agent. They work exclusively for that one insurance company and no one else. These agents are very knowledgeable about the insurance products their company has to offer, but they don't usually have much information about what's going on in the rest of the insurance market, and even if they do, they're not supposed to share that information with you. Their sales motivation is directly impacted by the company's goals and not necessarily your needs. Captive agents are geared more toward one-time transactions than long-term relationships with their clients.
Independent Agent
The whole concept of an independent insurance agent revolves around being able to represent multiple insurance carriers, and offer a much wider variety of insurance products, giving you more coverage and price options that best fulfill your needs. An independent agent is trained to be knowledgeable of many different products in the market to help you decide what best works for you. They are long-term relationship driven, making it easier for you to maintain a stable relationship with the same agent throughout the years, as they help you identify and take care of your evolving insurance needs.
At Affordable American Insurance, we specialize in business development, which makes us one of the fastest growing independent insurance brokers in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Texas, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. Our agencies are designed to help you with every last detail related to your insurance needs and accompany you in that process throughout the years. Contact an AAI agent in your area today!