Insurance Brokers: directory of firms

An independent broker or agency represents you in the market and can move your policy between carriers at renewal without your having to start over. A captive or exclusive agent represents a single insurer, knows that company's forms and underwriting intimately, and cannot quote anyone else. Direct writers sell without an intermediary, usually online or by phone.

The trade-off is breadth against depth. A broker who works with a dozen carriers can find a home for an unusual risk and can tell you which company actually pays a certain kind of claim. A captive agent gives you one answer but often a faster one. Buying direct removes the commission conversation and also removes the person who would have noticed that your policy limits stopped matching your life three years ago.

Most personal and small commercial insurance is commission-based: the carrier pays the agency a percentage of the premium when the policy is issued and again at each renewal. That cost is inside the rate, so going direct to the same carrier does not normally make the same policy cheaper. What it does do is remove the person who has to defend your renewal.

Two other arrangements exist. Some carriers pay contingent or profit-sharing commissions based on how a whole book of business performs, which is a genuine conflict worth asking about. And some brokers, mostly in commercial lines, charge a disclosed broker fee instead of or alongside commission. Ask which applies to you, ask whether the fee is refundable, and ask whether any recommendation pays the agency more than the alternative.

A broker gathers the exposure information, submits it to carriers, and comes back with quotes. Binding is the moment coverage attaches, and it is not the same as the policy arriving; a binder is temporary evidence of coverage until the policy is issued. Read the policy when it comes, because that is the document that will be applied to your claim, not the quote sheet or the email.

Renewal is where a broker earns their commission or fails to. A good one re-markets the risk when the carrier's rate moves, confirms the values are still right, and tells you what changed in the form. A renewal that arrives unchanged year after year at a rising premium usually means nobody looked. Ask what your broker did this year, specifically.

An admitted carrier is licensed in your state and its forms and rates are filed with the regulator. Surplus lines carriers are non-admitted specialist insurers that cover risks the admitted market will not take on, and they exist precisely because they can build new coverages and price unusual exposures that standard actuarial methods cannot handle.

The difference to care about is protection if the insurer fails. The NAIC is explicit that the state guaranty fund is a consumer protection within the admitted market and is not available in the surplus lines market, while also noting that the insolvency rate among surplus lines insurers has historically been low. If a broker places you with a non-admitted carrier, they should say so in writing and explain why the standard market declined.