The Monsters That Ate Life Insurance

I suppose it’s no different than any other industry. It grows and someone learns how to do it better, then faster, then faster and better, then faster without better, then it morphs into something that doesn’t really serve anyone’s needs other than the company that invented faster without better. Eventually it makes a bad name for all and then, just because of the shear size of the problem, it starts effecting the reputations of even those who are still doing just doing it better…..

How did you know I was about to go off on Selectquote? It doesn’t take a huge leap of assumption to know that the mega agencies, for all the good they claim they are doing. may be tipping the scales toward a client base in the industry that just knows fast and doesn’t know squat about what they bought. You know I’m about to drag out old fashioned, but hear me out. When there is no time spent with a client on the phone or in person, and there is no asking if the client has questions, and if there is no serious discussion of budget and product appropriateness and there is no follow up customer service, just what did they get from Selectquote?

They got life insurance right? Their mantle to which they hang all socks is that they are reaching the masses that we, the lowly three or four at a time independent life insurance agents can’t possibly get to. I have to admit that writing 100,000 life insurance applications in a year seems a bit daunting, but with no real interaction and no follow up customer service and a factory full of life insurance agent robots, gosh, the sky is the limit. But I suggest to you that no studies have been done to see how this annual mud slide of undefined life insurance business with no annual followup and no studies to see what stays in force likely leads to a thing called adverse selection. Life insurance companies like to cite adverse selection a lot when they aren’t making boat loads of money from it, but even with boat loads of money it comes back around.

Bottom line. Maybe not having mega agencies out there writing tons of policies annually isn’t such a bad thing. It would create more jobs because agents would actually have to be involved with clients. It would lead to better field underwriting and less adverse selection. It would lead to less lapsed policies because life insurance policies lapse quicker if clients don’t know what they bought. The only downside I’m seeing is less blog material for me, but I’ll get by. If you have questions or feel like you may have not quite been heard or didn’t get the rate you were quoted with Selectquote or Zander Insurance, call or email me directly. My name is Ed Hinerman. Let’s talk.