Our Professional Consultants cater to your Business Insurance in Sherman Oaks
BROKER VS AGENT IS EXPERTISE VERSUS SALES
There are powerful differences between direct selling Agents and real Independent Agencies “Insurance Brokers”. The differences matter greatly to Small and Medium sized businesses (“SMB’s”). No one should expect that absent a clear explanation that a small business person can know and understand the differences between various policies and coverage.
It never surprises us that so much business insurance fails the claims test. It is normally bought in a hurry by small and medium businesses for the new lease or location (and landlord lease conditions). Like most areas, Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Encino have a range of Agents; the trick is finding one with experience who knows what he is doing. Smaller business cannot afford an uncovered big loss.
Agents for direct selling insurance companies receive very little if any product training. Direct selling insurance companies include Farmers Insurance, Allstate Insurance, and State Farm Insurance among others. Those Agents are under pressure to produce for their own carrier only. Most likely don’t even know themselves precisely what is in their policies. Equally important, they don’t even know what is not in their policies. Sales scripting, calling systems, email marketing are all high on the agenda. Policy construction, wordings, clauses and their meanings, limitations and exclusions are not even on the agenda for review. There are very real differences between similar sounding products for small business insurance.
When dealing with your business insurance it’s not a good idea to work with an Agent who spends most of his day selling automobile insurance. Look for an Agent who has a deep bench and resources to offer you. Look for some good questions being asked such as:
- Are you valuing your stock at actual cash value or replacement cost? Should cost of handling and restocking and administration be built into claims payments?
- Do you make any sales on recurring payments?
- Are your website and social pages secured by anti-virus software and firewalls? Are you keeping sensitive information on your cloud or server systems? Is all I.P. cleared?
- What is your backup process? Have you tried to restore anything or tested the backups?
- Have you completed a business income review recently?
- Do you go to fairs and exhibitions and have a booth and stock?
- How often do your employees travel out of state? Out of Country?
- Are your shipments sent to you F.O.B., and if not, when does your risk start?
- Do you or your staff make home deliveries?
- How does your internal bookkeeping work, who reconciles the checkbook, who issues checks and payments and how is that authorized?
- Do you have an employee handbook we can review?
- Do you have an illness and injury prevention program in place?
If these questions are not being asked, chances are that the person you are working with does not know everything they should know; further they may not have multiple markets to choose the best product for you and cannot do much tailoring of coverages.
When your Agent explains the policy coverages to you in detail, suddenly pricing looks a lot more transparent as you can see what you are, and are not getting. If you would like to have Commercial Insurance done right and understandably, we would be happy to assist you.
