Access to 100+ carriers and 3,000 products

Why Independent Agents partner with Smart Choice

• Partnering with Smart Choice has had a HUGE impact. I have grown my business far more than I could have expected and it was because Smart Choice provided access to the markets needed to be successful.
• Our Smart Choice Territory Manager (TM) is amazing, and I knew that he would help me become successful in a challenging insurance environment. My agency would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for Smart Choice and my TM, Chris Reisdorf.
• It’s hard to imagine running this agency without the support of Smart Choice. The reality of being a brokerage is that it is significantly more complex because every writing company has its unique differences. Smart Choice helps us solve that problem by giving us one central point of contact for help with dozens of writing companies. It prevents us from getting caught in the minutiae and lets us focus on what matters most: serving our customers.
• We thought Smart Choice would be fairly hands-off with a basic level of service. On the contrary, they’ve really become a valuable partner for our agency, being supportive, responsive and incredibly committed to our success.
• Any time we have questions about where to place business, or best practices on how to work with certain companies, our Smart Choice rep is more than willing to help. He’s knowledgeable and I don’t remember a time when one of my agents has had a question that he hasn’t been able to answer.
  
• Life insurance offers great commissions. Since I am a start from scratch agency it’s going to take a couple of years to build the residuals in the P&C market. Life allows me to make huge gains in revenue to offset that. It has also open doors for my P&C by getting me in front of customers that I might not have if they hadn’t requested a quote.
• Having the availability of carriers without the commitment for production along with the broad range of larger national carriers (Allstate, Nationwide, etc.) creates the image of a large agency regardless of actual size -- giving us the ability to compete with anyone in the industry.
• As a scratch agency, we had very little premium to show to carriers. Smart Choice allowed us the opportunity to get appointed with carriers that we wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.
• The accounting team at Smart Choice and their online portal is very clear and makes our reconciliation job very easy.
• Our State Director at Smart Choice (Todd Alexanderson) is ALWAYS here and available for us when we need anything. He uses his connections with carriers to really help us beyond our expectations.
• Smart Choice is always adding new carriers and providing incentives to qualify for additional compensation which allows our agency to perform at the highest level.
• In the beginning of my career, only having access to one carrier as a captive— even at my very best, I would be lucky to close 15 to 20% of the deals that came my way. With Smart Choice giving me the options and the capability to quote so many carriers, it’s extended my closing ratio up to 75 to 80%.
• It used to be that my hesitation to write life insurance policies was the TIME that it took! But, with customer demand high and the potential for increased revenue I decided to partner with Smart Choice because of the ease in issuing most life policies.
• Smart Choice provides a vast choice of carriers to place insurance including access to Nationwide Insurance Commercial policies.
• My goal is to continue to grow my Agency and having Smart Choice partner with us to identify opportunities to purchase books was unexpected.
• Our revenue has increased significantly since we’ve joined Smart Choice. We were able to reach the commission cap in a short period of time and we’re now able to get paid 100% commission and participate in profit sharing on an annual basis. This is something that we never had before when we worked exclusively with wholesalers.
• Having direct access to carriers has been a huge help in allowing us to respond to our client’s needs in a fast and efficient manner.
• The impact on our agency has been significant. We were able to reach the commission cap in a very short period of time which now allows us to be paid 100% of the commission from the carriers. We also qualified for profit sharing this year which greatly impacted our agencies revenue.
• Smart Choice has been instrumental in our success because they put the agency’s best interests at heart and will do whatever is necessary to help them succeed.
• One of the most challenging things we face as an independent agency would be the lack of carriers you can acquire if your agency does not have a large book of business. If you can’t get access, you just can’t compete. Smart Choice gets us that access and to over one hundred carriers which means I can offer multiple policies to clients assuring a good fit and a successful sale. If I was making this decision again, I would in a heartbeat!
  
• Smart Choice has allowed me to get direct appointments with carriers that I wouldn't have been able to get on my own or even through referrals.
• Our revenue has been significantly bolstered working with Smart Choice – we’re hitting bonus multipliers we wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise – like 4.5% in aggregate instead of 2.5%.
• Bestow's Term Life Instant Issue is a complete game changer. It allows our agency to be well rounded in our day-to-day prospecting and servicing of our policyholders. The amount of time this product saves our agency is incredible. With the personalized URL you can embed the link on your own agency website and social media pages which allows you to create a more focused and strategic plan to cross-sell your existing book of business. Our clients are thoroughly impressed by how user friendly it is. More importantly, the Bestow Instant Issue allows the client to be in control of creating their own legacy. It restores confidence in the consumer to purchase a life insurance policy without the feeling of being pressured. In my experience selling life insurance there are too many roadblocks or 'objections' for the average consumer to purchase a life insurance policy. Not with Bestow. You can apply and purchase in less than 15 minutes because it removes all roadblocks for the consumer and accommodates the busiest of schedules. In less than two months thus far with Bestow, we are on pace to increase our gross commissions for our agency by 25%.