Finding an insurance agent that will take the time to study your circumstances and honestly discuss your insurance needs and options is important. It is a New Year, and the question every policyholder should ask is: Do I trust my insurance agent to be the one to make certain I am properly insured?
In my book, Pay Up!: Preventing A Disaster With Your Own Insurance Company, I discuss the importance of selecting the right insurance agent:
NOT ALL AGENTS ARE THE SAME
The moral of these stories isn’t that you can’t trust your agent. The lesson here is to find an agent you can trust. When people ask me if they should trust their insurance agent, I turn it around on them and ask: “Do you trust your insurance agent?”
While a good agent is a valuable asset, there are plenty of bad ones looking to make a quick buck and move on. They don’t take the time to learn your needs. They may not know all the available options, and even if they do, they may have a vested interest in keeping them from you. Not all agents have access to the same insurance products. Unscrupulous agents might sell you a product that they can offer rather than recommend one better suited for you that they cannot.
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This is why using a good agent you can trust is so important. Find an agent that is knowledgeable, experienced, and willing to put in the time to understand your unique insurance needs. Being an insurance agent is a significant calling. Insurance companies constantly change their policies. Keeping up with the changes and available products is a huge undertaking. On top of that, insurance agents must understand the idiosyncratic needs of each policyholder. Great agents should also be willing to put the interests of the customer above their own or that of the insurance company and provide honest and accurate advice.
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Above all, great agents work hard to learn your specific insurance needs. They will take time to ask questions about your property, your business, your health, your lifestyle, and whatever it is you are trying to insure. Good business insurance agents should know your business inside and out, as well as your industry, so that they can anticipate possible future losses and ensure you have the proper coverage. They understand that life and business are in constant flux, and they will revisit your policies on a periodic basis to make sure you still have the right coverage.
Insurance agents play an important role in the insurance industry. I strongly suggest dealing with a human agent rather than trying to self-diagnose your insurance risks. There is nothing wrong with studying your insurance risks and needs. It may help in your selection of an insurance agent. But surgeons do not perform procedures on themselves, and policyholders are not professionals studying insurance risks and products every day as great insurance agents do.
Everybody reading this blog should ask themselves the title of this post. If the answers are anything other than “yes” and “recently,” you should take a few minutes to get these issues taken care of now as part of your New Year’s resolutions.
Thought For The Day
Let’s Make 2023 Our Best Year Ever!
—Chip Merlin
