Getting started as an independent agency can be challenging. Even once you’ve found success, navigating industry and market changes isn’t always easy. Allan Miles, founder of R. Allan Miles Insurance Agency, has leveraged a network partnership to help him navigate those changes and build a multimillion-dollar agency.
Getting Started
Allan got into the insurance business in 1987, and his early experiences may sound familiar to a lot of people in the industry. He was in college, exploring his options, when he started working for a life insurance company. A couple of years later, he moved into other lines with a different insurer, but he was still working as a captive agent. In 1999, he decided to take the plunge and form an independent agency, the R. Allan Miles Insurance Agency.
He’s done incredibly well for himself in the years since. After starting his agency from scratch, he now has a book of business worth nearly $7 million.
Over the years, his network relationship has helped him grow through many challenges. “Smart Choice has been part of my agency for a very long time,” Allan says. He doesn’t recall exactly when he first joined the network, but he estimates that it was around 20 years ago.
The network provided the support that Allan – and many others in his situation – need to gain a foothold in the business. As Allan explains, “In the independent agency environment, especially in the beginning years, you’re trying to grow your market base, and you’re trying to represent the most reputable and most competitive companies. That’s difficult because a lot of companies are very careful about who they appoint. They look at lots of things and that makes it a challenge, especially when you’re an agent just getting started.”
Growing an Agency Takes Hard Work
Allan’s agency has seen tremendous success, but it didn’t happen overnight. When asked how he got his agency to the point where it could thrive, Allan can’t point to one single thing.
“It’s an accumulative effect, of course, as we all know in the industry,” he says, detailing how he added clients by referrals and simply worked hard and put himself out there to gain new business. “It took many years to get there, but my network has played a role through all of those years,” he adds.
A Dual Role
When Allan was building his independent agency, he primarily needed the carrier access that Smart Choice could provide. However, more than two decades later, access isn’t as much of a challenge. Allan has proven himself to carriers, and with a multimillion-dollar book of business, meeting production requirements isn’t the hurdle it used to be.
Given this, you might wonder why Allan maintains his network partnership. As it turns out, he has a good reason for staying: More options.
“Smart Choice serves a dual role,” Allan says, explaining that Smart Choice works very well for agencies that are trying to gain traction and market access, but the network works equally well for well-established agencies with many direct appointments who like to have as many options as possible.
Those options may include access to more carriers, but they also may include options for how you submit business and get paid. In some cases, aggregating with Smart Choice may provide an advantage over direct business submission, based on their volume and how they structure their bonuses.
“You’re trying to give your attention to your carriers that you have appointments with, and you want to give each one the proper business that you can place with them,” says Allan. “Smart Choice allows you to also add in some other carriers, while still focusing on the direct appointment carriers. So, it just works well for us…really well.”
Keeping Up with Market Shifts
The industry consistently changes, and independent agencies need to be able to evolve along with it. Allan’s network partnership has helped him stay on the leading edge of these changes.
For instance, let’s say that Allan discovers that a new carrier has a tailored product offering and the most competitive rates for a certain business niche. His network works to make him knowledgeable about these changes and new offerings and can give him an appointment more quickly and with lower or no production requirements.
“Because the business is very cyclical, companies may be competitive one year and not as competitive at the next renewal,” Allan says. By working with a network, his agency can always offer the most competitive options to their clients. He also receives guidance about how to best serve customers in a new niche.
A Partnership That Benefits Independent Agents
A good partnership benefits both parties, and that’s certainly been Allan’s experience with his Smart Choice relationship. Allan describes the Smart Choice platform as “very equitable and extremely fair.” He can’t say the same about all the organizations available to independent agents.
“There are other aggregator type groups out there, but I feel like their contracts tie you in much longer and much deeper,” he explains. One big advantage is that Smart Choice stops taking a commission percentage once a certain level is reached. “With some of these other networks and aggregators, you don’t have that cap. They’re going to take a percentage of what you do in perpetuity, and they’re going to take it at that same percentage no matter how big your book gets. To me, that makes Smart Choice a very equitable and fair proposition.”
An Expert in Your Corner
Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve got years of experience under your belt, the industry is always presenting new challenges and opportunities.
As an independent agent, it can be nice to know that someone’s got your back. Allan gets that from Smart Choice.
“It’s a very hands-on type of relationship,” Allan says of Smart Choice. “Whatever problems or issues that may have come up, they’ve worked tirelessly and with a sense of urgency to get those things resolved.”