Who Does Your Insurance Agent Work For?Written by Jordan Walt
You, or His Company....? There’s a relatively unknown market in insurance industry that consumers need to know about. This is a market where a single agent can offer you multiple choices from multiple companies. This is independent insurance agency market. When you have an independent agent (IA) who you know and trust, you shouldn’t have to find a new agent again. As an IA you have ability to “shop” a customer with numerous insurance companies, finding them best rate and coverage, so they don’t have to. Imagine what happens next time renewal comes on your insurance and premium is suddenly $500 higher than it was before. With an IA, all you need to do is call. They have ability to try and find a similar policy with another company; you haven’t changed agents, given personal information to strangers, or gone through monotonous task of shopping your insurance. Instead, you left it to an expert. Depending on size of agency you are dealing with, they may represent over 20 different companies. This means you no longer have to go online and fill in boxes, deal with 1-800 numbers, or “call-around” to different agents, each with one company to choose from. Why have so few people heard of this market? While these companies do represent multimillion-dollar organizations, and some of largest organizations in world (i.e. AIG and Zurich), majority of these agencies are smaller companies, not having resources to launch advertising campaigns to mainstream market via television, radio, and other forms of media advertising.
| | Our Greatest AssetWritten by Gloria Kaiser
When I think about wealth, immediately my mind thinks in terms of money, investments savings and those who are wealthy. When I hear reports of school shootings, children being tried and incarcerated for murder, drugs and a barrage of other crimes, it is apparent that what has become lost amongst things we have considered to bring wealth, is our most valuable asset, our children. I found some disturbing statistics from many experts on children and child develop. The comments and statistics that I’ve found were:"Students ages 12-18 were victims of about 2 million nonfatal crimes of violence or theft at school in 2001. Over 5 year period from 1997 through 2001 teachers were victims of approximately 1.3 million nonfatal crimes at school, including 817,000 thefts and 473,000 violence crimes... It was also reported that “9 percent of all elementary and secondary schools teacher were threatened with an injury by a student, and 4 percent were physically attacked by a student.” The US National Center for Education Statistics. "More than a third of American Children experience their parents divorce before reaching 18. … In general children who have recently experienced a family dissolution have a more difficult time with academic and social expectations at school than children from intact families or established single parent or blended families.” The Journal of Instructional Psychology "57% of expulsions for bringing firearms to school involved high school students. 33% involved junior/middle schools, and 10% involved elementary school students. (Gun-Free Schools Act Report: School Year 1998-1999, U.S. Department of Education, October 2002)
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