<p>Why would anyone need to go through an agent instead of going directly to, say, Geico?</p>
<p>What are you referring to? Home, Health, Auto or Life? If you call Geico, you will be referred to an agent anyway.</p>
<p>My BIL sells insurance - he helps people find the best policy for them. It depends on circumstances & there are a lot of companies.
( I don’t get best rates with geico)</p>
<p>I just picked geico for example. We have an agent for home and umbrella policy. They are raising the premium so much. I am looking to change. I just called a company, their quote for umbrella policy is a very small fraction of what we pay. If I can randomly call and get a better quote, why would anyone go to an agent?</p>
<p>Convenience. Bundling (multiple policies). Specialized knowledge/industry does it that way (business, medical coverage, not your situation). Inertia (my parents). Willing to put up with being Yet Another Faceless Policy Holder Calling Or Emailing Yet Another Faceless Insurance Claims Processor (State Farm sells against that in their commercials).</p>
<p>Igloo…it depends on whether your existing agent is an independent agent or a captive agent of only one insurance carrier (ie Allstate). Independent agents represent several insurance carriers and can shop your coverage at each to get you the best deal. Captive agents only have one carrier to go to. Each different carrier has different underwriting standards and hence different prices. If your existing agent is an independent agent then I suggest you ask him to get competing quotes from several carriers.</p>
<p>By way of example, my coverage has been with an independent agent for many yrs. This yr he reviewed my coverage and shopped it to about 5 different carriers. The result was that my Home Owners and Auto policies were moved to a new carrier saving me about $1,600/yr in premiums.</p>
<p>You can of course try to be your own agent and go directly to a Geico or Progressive and see if you can do better but you won’t have access to the other carriers that market exclusively thru independent agents.</p>
<p>Mine is an independent agent. We had them over 25 years. For claims we go directly to the insurance company. We had one claim last year due to snow damage in 25 years. I just called a big company for a quote and their quote is not even half of what we pay through our independent agent. just switching would save me over $1K. I think our insurance markets exclusively to independent agents. But if the rate is so much higher, what benefit could they possibly be?</p>
<p>Our State Farm agent has been very helpful for the past 25 years (ouch, how can it have been that long?). He’s been great with the few claims we’ve made and helpful keeping our cost down now that we have two teenaged male drivers.</p>
<p>At one point, a guy rear-ended me. His insurance company was Geico, and I remember thinking what a pain they were to deal with (I can’t remember details since this was a few years ago). We’ll never switch from State Farm.</p>
<p>My parents swear by State Farm. In our case, DH chose an independent agent, and we’ve been very happy with that…she’s made helpful switches over time among competing companies to reduce our costs and bundle services. We use her for car, home & umbrella coverage. For life insurance, the task fell to me rather than DH, and I shopped among policies myself. So it seems a variety of approaches can all work.</p>
<p>Over the years, independent agents for car and property insurances have saved us thousands of dollars by shopping policies for us among companies. They’re not tied to one company, so can comparison shop wihtout bias. Good ones will regularly reevaluate your situation.</p>
<p>When searching for the least cost health insurance option for a healthy single adult, however, I found that we got no callbacks from independent agents. Presumably this was because the policy we were discussing was such small change to them (Catastrophic only) it didn’t merit their time? In that case, I compared options online, found the most appropriate policy, contacted that company’s Sales Department and worked directly without any agent.</p>
<p>For life or health insurance, an independent broker helps you find the best company for you, in many cases knowing the market can save a client a great deal of money.</p>
<p>Another advantage to the agent is you have some one who can help you with service, help you navigate the maze of $10/hour people servicing your policy, but who do not understand the big picture. Not that anyone is malicious, just clueless at times. Knowing the right lingo to use, the right questions to ask, the right people to call if escalation is necessary.</p>
<p>Maybe I should shop for a new agent? My agent allowed the premium to go up from $400 to $2200 for minor life changes. The quote I got today is about $500 and all our life changes were included.</p>
<p>Hard to tell whats going here but if the coverage is identical then there appears to be huge difference in premiums. If your agent is doing his job he should be trying to get you some competing quotes. He should realize that such a big increase will cause you to look elsewhere and he runs the risk losing you as a customer.</p>
<p>She didn’t offer to look. Our minor changes are really minor, adding a car, our kid getting a license, we got old… All pretty much routine for people of our age.</p>
<p>We have had the same indep insurance agent for > 15 years. We’ve found our costs for home/car/etc. to be very reasonable, and we’ve always had great results. He takes care of my small business insurance, too. Everytime we need something we get great ervice, and an explanation, if necessary. He talked to both our Ss before they started driving about what insurance does, what to do if you get into an accident, etc. It made much more of an impact coming from him than from Mom & Dad.</p>
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There’s no reason not to do both - try a new independent agent but also contact a few major companies and compare the quotes between them and what your current policies are. It’s best to shop around.</p>
<p>Something still doesn’t sound right…you say you are adding another car and a teenaged driver and the resulting umbrella only premium went from $400 to $2200. And this when you got a direct umbrella only quote for $500…Where is the primary insurance for the new car and driver? Maybe your agent is including the primary in her quote. I think you should just lay your cards on the table with your agent and find out what gives. Let her know that you have an umbrella quote for $1700 less than her quote…let her look it over and figure out where the discrepancy is…sounds like it’s not apples to apples.</p>
<p>We have a separate automobile insurance. The new car and the new driver was added to our old auto insurance. We have the maximum coverage on the car insurance. The new direct quote for umbrella only is from our auto insurance company.</p>