Are licensed independent insurance agent required to have an physical agency location to sell for ins carriers

Question

I'm a Florida 220 General Lines Licensed Agent.

I'm seeking to offer a simpler way of shopping for auto insurance by providing the cheapest auto insurance quotes from top 15 insurance companies to consumers via my website.

The completion of the application will take less than five minutes. We will match the consumers application to all affiliated insurance companies. Then our system will show the lowest rates out of those fifteen for you. After you compare car insurance rates you will be given the option to purchase a low cost policy online.

I would like to get set up with the following insurance companies: Progressive, GEICO, AIG, Arrowhead, Electric, Encompass, Esurance, The Hartford, Liberty Mutual, MetLife, Permanent General, Safeco, Travelers, and Unitrin.

By comparing rates from a broad list of companies we'll improve the consumers chances of purchasing the cheapest insurance.

Answer 1

Yes, you must have a physical address.  You're not going to get a company to appoint you without it, and you're not going to be able to get an agency license without it.  You also need to have regular business hours, and show them how you're going to SERVICE the policies.  

Your system isn't going to work, I truly believe, because it doesn't take the credit scoring or MVR into account.  Just like all the other online rating engines there are out there, it will give an INDICATION.  You can't afford to pay $10 for each MVR, and $3 x 15 carriers ($45) for the scoring to get an accurate QUOTE.  That will cost you $55 per quote, regardless of whether or not the person BUYS from you!!

Geico is a direct seller only, so you're not going to get an appointment from them, no matter what you do.  

Great idea, theoretically.  Not going to work, though, in the real world.

Answer 2

Sure you need an address, but most don't care if you're working out of your house or not.

You sound like you need to write a business plan (try www.sba.gov and www.score.org as starting resources).  There are other companies that already do this (not the least of which is Progressive that sells a different contracts online than through the brokerage system), so the section about competition and marketing will be critical.  You should also either be realistic about the cost of the site creation, data management, CRM, and so on, or you need to have the skills to program and maintain the whole thing yourself.  

If there are package deals where you can just subscribe to a quoting system and pick a template to wrap around it with your company name, this is a clear indication that the bones of the business are not unique.  If that's the case, can you do your own SEO, why would a shopper choose you instead of someone else? what's your unique selling proposition? how are you allocating your advertising budget?

I'm not saying it can't be done, in fact you could be raking money in before too long, but a detailed and researched business plan is your opportunity to work out the wrinkles.  Failing miserably because you couldn't track the conversion ratio of each marketing campaign would suck.

Answer 3

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