6 Reasons To Work With An Independent Life Insurance Agent – Podcast Episode 23

In this podcast, I’m going to be discussing six reasons to work with an independent life insurance agent. Let’s get started with number one, most independent agents should have in depth knowledge about the different policies out there, as long as they’re a licensed agent, they should. I will tell you one thing, though, man, there’s so many insurance agents that are woefully inadequate here. And unfortunately, the insurance industry attracts a lot of people who aren’t going to be in the industry very long.

1:07

Unfortunately, it seems easy. It seems like the money should be pretty good. But it’s difficult. And the fail out rate is pretty darn high, like well above 90% of the agents are not going to be around in the next two to three years. So what a lot of uplines or managers will do is will strip will restrict their agents who are under them to only one or two or maybe maximum of three companies. Because it’s just difficult for them with their limited knowledge and skill set to understand kind of the the minutiae and nuance of all the different insurance companies.

And in many cases, even if you end up paying more money, it’s less of a headache on them. Because they’re they’re doing more business with, you know, one company versus the other, and they may get bonused on that, you know, the managers may get bonused on it, and the agents may get bonused on that as well, too.

2:15

But just understand, that’s not always in your best interest. Because you not only want the best insurance policy, you want the best insurance policy that has the lowest pricing, because there’s just no sense in overpaying if you overpay $20 a month, which is not in common with a lot of agents out there $20 a month for one year times 12 months at $240. If you live in extra 10 years, you will have overpaid right around $2,400 If you live an extra 20 years $4,800.

So the math really adds up and getting that first day coverage and lowest rates is really important. That’s another thing some some agents out there, they they will only will sell a two year waiting period policy, which we don’t recommend. Because why? Why would you ever choose a policy with a two year waiting period, when in most cases you can qualify for first day coverage?

3:17

That kind of leads us to our number two topic, which is an independent life insurance agent can guide you in choosing the right policy, in most cases. Now, again, if they don’t work with a lot of different insurance companies, then your options are going to be restricted. Now at funeral friends of America, we only help people with first day coverage or benefits.

We don’t help people with policies that have two year waiting period plans, we always just direct people to other companies to do that. It’s just not in our best interest to really helped people with that type of policy. And just, you know, in full transparency, there’s some other companies out there that if you’re going to get a two year waiting period plan, the pricing of these other companies out there is so much better than any company that I can contract with. And I just, you know, I feel for our company, that when people call us and ask us for help. Sometimes that means saying no to us, and helping them say yes to another policy. That’s actually going to be a lower price.

And actually I could provide in first day coverage and stuff. I’m not worried about that, too. You’re waiting period cleansers. There’s a couple of companies out there. They’re captive companies, captive agents, and they only sell their own product. But that one product for a two year waiting period is it’s the best one out there and I could explain that kind of off the podcast privately with you if you want. But yeah, but we don’t recommend to your wedding plans as a whole because that you’re gonna have to wait two years before it pays out if you die of any health or medical reason and There’s just no sense, right now 90 to 95% of the people, we help qualify for first day coverage or benefits.

5:07

The third area today is an independent life insurance agent can help you understand the fine print. And this is this is really important as long as they’re knowledgeable, right. And you might want to ask your agent, how long they’ve been in the business. Because if they’ve only been in the business a year or so, they are a green horn. And it’s not to say that you, you know, won’t get a decent insurance plan. It’s just that could have you done better. Or maybe you could have gotten a policy that has additional riders, or flexibility or payment options or something like that.

But, you know, life insurance policies, they’re, they’re not always complex. But if you’re not used to reading them, and understanding them, and not you don’t understand the fine print, then that can be a problem. You know, I have people call up once in a while they’ll see their policy, and they’ll read one thing, and they’re just kind of, they just have questions about it. And once I go through it, it’s no good to be like, Oh, okay, I get it.

6:18

But it you know, the insurance industry does have some technical jargon, some, some legal jargon, you know, just some insurance specific jargon. And, you know, it’s definitely enough to confuse somebody who’s not, you know, who may only buy one or two policies in their life. So we can certainly help you understand the fine print. But, you know, it’s really important to understand the fine print on policies that have waiting periods, or had modified coverage or something like that. And then I will also say, you know, it’s not just the fine print, but actually, the actual questions that are listed on the request for coverage, the application, those are really important too, because just because you get denied by one insurance company, doesn’t mean you will get denied by another insurance company.

7:10

Let’s kind of jump into number four, because we kind of talked about that. Number four is an independent agent can help you get the best value for your money. So when you’re, when you have specific health issues, some companies are not going to like all specific health issues. And chances are, there’s going to going to be another insurance company out there that will accept that.

So what you really want to do is have an experienced agent help you get it right the first time. Because if you get denied the first time, there’s insurance companies out there that that’s one of their health questions, have you been denied for coverage by another insurance company in the past, and that can carry some weight on as to whether you’ll get approved or not.

So how we do it, and our approval rate is 100%. As long as we know everything. So what we do is when somebody calls up, we’ll just get some basic information, we’ll ask some basic questions about their health prescriptions and stuff like that. And then we’ll give a preliminary number based off that on what we think somebody can get approved for.

And then one thing we do before actually calling the insurance company is we actually require that everybody go through the actual application form the request for coverage, we just read the questions to them, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything, the applicant. And by doing so, once we get on the phone with the insurance company, we never, we never failed to get an approval.

The only reason we we wouldn’t is if the person who were submitting for flat out forgot about a medication in the past, and they didn’t tell us and they just didn’t even remember. But that would have to be a really significant medication, you know, something for dementia or, you know, congestive heart failure, you know, cancer, kind of things like that. But by the same token, most people should remember those medications.

9:21

So, the fifth topic today is an independent life insurance agent can save you time and money. And I just kind of went through our process, just to help you kind of see how we can actually save you time and money because, you know, the best way to save time is get it right the first time. And a lot of insurance agents don’t do that. We we just talk with so many people and they seek us out after they’ve been declined by another insurance company. They were told that they didn’t qualify.

And I tell you what, I mean, that should never happen if you get declined by An insurance company, if you go to all that effort to actually get on the phone with your agent, in in, get get a policy, try to get a policy approved and you dick got declined, the insurance agent did something wrong, as long as you told them everything. But it you know, it does happen, it does happen, there’s some agents out there, that will just apply. And just even though they know it’s on the edge, or it would be a decline, they’re just hoping that the insurance company may miss something, and actually give them an approval.

But the thing is, we just want to answer the questions on the request for coverage form accurately. And honestly, they’re going to be yes, no questions. There’s no gray area, there is no gray area at all. And they’re going to say has things happened within the last six months, 12 months, 24 months, whatever it is 18 months? And everything’s black and white? It’s yes and no. So don’t ever let an agent kind of maybe steer you wrong, I guess might be a right way to say it. But honestly, it’s the best policy, I always tell our people just stay in or answer everything. Honestly, there’s nothing to hide, because we’ve got you with an insurance company that’s going to accept everything that that you have currently going on medically or that has happened in the past.

11:21

And the sixth reason to work with an independent life insurance agent is they can maximize your insurance benefits. So we just want to make sure that you get the most out of your policy, there’s some companies out there that have riders that they’re they’re free to add on to the policy, but you’ve got to check a box, you’ve actually got to confirm that you want that one is like an accelerated death benefit rider.

And what that means is, if you had a $20,000 policy, and you were diagnosed with a terminal illness, which means you were going to die within the next 12 months, you could get that in depending on the insurance company, the ones that we work with and recommend with, you could actually get the entire $20,000 of your policy out 12 months before you passed away. And you might be thinking, Well, why on earth? Would I want to pull all that money out early, when I’m gonna need that money for my burial? Right? Well, here’s the deal. Most of us if we received a terminal illness diagnosis, we’d be devastated, and rightly so. But I would say probably within a month or two, most of us would come to terms with it.

12:38

And then most of the people we talk with would say, You know what, if I’m going to die anyway, I want to take care as much as possible, so that I’m not a burden to my family. So they’re not scrambling to take care of this in the days and weeks after I pass away. So you might think this is kind of morbid, but this is a wonderful gift and a wonderful legacy to leave behind for your family is you could pull all that money out and go down to the funeral home and say, hey, I want to get everything paid for in advance, the only thing I want my family to have to do is just show up and attend the service and not worried about anything else. And they can help you take care of that.

And you can prepay that plan with the insurance money. And that way, nobody’s gonna have to worry about anything. And you can have that peace of mind knowing that, you know, this is taken care of your family, and your family can have that peace of mind, knowing that there’s nothing left for them to do, except just kind of mourn your loss, and celebrate your life, the way the way your life should be celebrated.

13:48

The other thing too is, you know, it’s an accelerated death benefit. In this example, you get $20,000. And you can accelerate all of it. We’ll say that the burial is only 10,000. Now you’ve got $10,000 left. How cool would it be? Because there’s no restriction on that money. You can do anything with it? How cool would it be, if there was all that, you know, there’s that one last cool thing you wanted to do.

14:12

Maybe it was a trip, maybe it’s a vacation that you never were able to achieve because money was just tight, always right. So you can actually take that extra 10,000 and go on that vacation, maybe take family members, your kids or something like that, and have that one last memory for you, that will last your lifetime. But more importantly, have that one last memory for your children for them to have for the rest of their life because they’re going to be around a lot longer, right?

So it’s very cool to be able to help people with that and just, you know, there’s there’s always bills that pop up too. So you know, you’ve got that 10,000 Your your burials taken care of. Now, if there’s any other bills, you can just use the $10,000 to pay that have to there’s multiple ways of using that money. But it’s really nice when you can sell accelerate all of it. And all these your insurance companies are different. Sometimes it’s 100% time, sometimes it’s 50%. And some companies, it’s included, and some companies, you actually got to you got to check a box and request it. But it’s free. You know, why wouldn’t you do that? Why would you not have that option. But there’s some inexperienced independent agents out there that that kind of miss out on that. I, I’ve gotten.

15:34

That’s kind of the six things that we wanted to talk about, I wanted to add a couple little plus topics in here, too. When you have your policy, a couple important things, just make sure you pay your premiums on time, because you’ve got a permanent policy with these policies, you’ve got a permanent whole life policy, just make sure and pay them on time, what we always recommend is that people actually have that billing date colon coincide with the date that their social security or disability checks drop into their account.

And in most cases, that’s going to be the first or the third of the month, or the second Wednesday, third, Wednesday or fourth Wednesday of each month. And different insurance companies kind of handle it differently. But most, most of the insurance companies we work with, can set it up to coincide with your actual Social Security billing date, now, they don’t pull that money out of your social security funds, nobody can do that, that has to do with federal government, they just drop that money into your account. And then we can have it draft on the same day.

So like, if you get paid the third Wednesday of each month, we can have it just coincide with that. And it would draft on the third Wednesday. Typically, we don’t like to start people in the middle of the month, we would just recommend, hey, you know, if we get your policy approved today, let’s just have it start on your next pay day. And that way, you don’t have any money coming out in the middle of the month, and you’re good to go forward.

16:35

And then the the second kind of plus topic is just review your policies periodically. If you buy a policy from us, we’re available anytime, month, in most cases, we’re going to be reaching out to you after two, three years. Just make sure that everything’s okay. Make sure that your beneficiary is okay. Make sure that there’s been no address change, no billing change, no, you know, change of beneficiary and anything like that.

So just understand also that if you need to, after reviewing your policy, we can help you add more coverage. And whether it’s a policy that we helped you with, or another agent helped you with, and again, they’re probably out of the business at this point. But yeah, we can help you with any policy out there. So there we go six reasons to work with an independent life insurance agent. 

NOTE: Show notes are AI transcribed, so there may be some spelling or grammatical errors.