Captive or None Captive? That is the question??................HELL NO!
I hear this all the time, should I go with this captive agency? But they offer free leads. Or my Agency isn’t captive and you have all the freedom you want. Well, let me share my experience with a “NONE CAPTIVE” IMO Firstly they told me after I was in that you need to buy leads and you have to be super careful about where you buy them because of compliance issues. That did make sense, but then they directed me to use their “Vetted” lead vendors so I would spend $11 to $30 a lead, and honestly, after a year of nearly going broke playing games with their crap leads I had enough! So I started to look around at other Non-Captive IMO’s well here is what I found. YOU ARE STILL CAPTIVE!!! No matter what they tell you, you are going to be shocked if you try to leave and then find out your upline VP has to approve your leaving and they usually won’t. In my case I couldn’t get them to answer the phone or reply to a text, they were “MIA” So I called my carriers and found that even if they let me go I still had to wait 6 months to use those carriers again…..WTF? So at the end of the day if you are serious about being in insurance, do your own research, vet the company, and don’t buy all the BS. The standard waiting period to switch companies from a carrier standpoint is 6 months, which means that If you leave your company and you are contracted with let’s say Mutual of Omaha. You will need to wait 6 months before you can write any new business with that company, and that’s if you are current with your chargebacks.
