Carrier Infusion Beats Carrier Appointment Confusion

When agents like you search for how to get appointed with independent insurance carriers you get hit in the face with ads from lots of aggregators with impressive carrier lineups. 

  • What they don’t brag about is their appointment process – and for good reason.

Direct carrier appointments and brokering are different

For most aggregators, networks, or clusters you might get directly appointed with a handful of the carriers on their list. But for most you are only getting ACCESS to all the other carriers. You do not want to be surprised by this, which is why it’s such an important concept to understand.

Check out this video to see the difference:

It’s true that you will probably get appointed with a few of the carriers on their list. But because they have a per-carrier production requirement (and not Firefly’s All-for-One approach) it would be impossible for you to meet the quotas for every carrier.

That’s why you won’t get DIRECT appointments with ALL of them.

When they say you get “access” to all their carriers they are not lying. They’re just not clearly explaining to you what “access” means.  Essentially every carrier you don’t get directly appointed with (which, because of the reasons explained above, will be most of them) you will get “access” to them through a brokerage arrangement.

Dr. Rolf shows what brokering policies feels like, here:

How “accessing” insurance carriers works in real life:

Let’s say a mortgage broker contacts you at 4:45 pm looking for a quote on a nice home and two autos for people who are moving into town. They’re in a pinch and need a quote ASAP.

You log into whatever quoting system the aggregator uses but then if the most competitive carriers are the ones you are not appointed with (see Murphy’s Law). You don’t have binding authority, so you have to request permission from the aggregator to bind the account.

They’ll need to look it over, make sure it fits, and then give you permission to move forward.  Hopefully they get back to you before they close (again, see Murphy’s Law) so you can deliver for that mortgage broker and make the sale.

That’s how brokering business works.  Almost every time “access” means brokered.

When an aggregator says that you will get “access to carriers immediately” that is the nicest sounding way for them to say that you’re not actually getting appointments and that you will have to ask the aggregator for permission to bind quotes.

To top it off, without the carrier appointment you probably won’t be able to service the accounts you wrote. That means more waiting when your client needs service, and a lower commission split for you (because someone else has to get paid to process the changes you don’t have authority to process).

Brokered access to a company is better than no access, but it’s a limited relationship so it’ll have a limited impact on your agency.  It isn’t really a part of your agency.  It just works alongside it.

Direct insurance appointments with Firefly are better

That’s what makes Firefly’s Carrier Infusion fun and exciting! Many agents say it’s awesome, but that’s for you to decide.

Once we agree to work together, we spring into action and use automations to take your information and pre-fill applications with all of our (soon to be your) carriers.

Firefly’s Carrier Infusion is the fastest easiest way for you to get directly appointed with all the carriers on on our list.

Some carriers will appoint you in hours, and others may take a few weeks.  But the result is the same – you get directly appointed with each carrier and once training and pre-bind are complete you can quote, issue, and service accounts yourself. That means less waiting and less frustration, along with more control and more money for you.

Now imagine again that it is 4:45pm on a Friday and a mortgage broker calls needing a quick quote.

You’ll jump into EZLynx, get quotes back on all of your carriers (even if you have carriers outside of Firefly), and the moment you identify the best value you can call, email, text message, or run to the mortgage broker with a bindable quote.

You win the account, and you strengthen your referral partnership. That’s what it’s like to be an agent after your Carrier Infusion.  You are actually getting appointed with the carriers so you have the authority to help people quickly.

Carrier Infusion means your relationship with the carrier is deeper, and naturally their impact on your agency is deeper. (In fact, you might want to check out this article on how to keep your new carrier relationships strong – because you are going to establish your own reputation with them.)

Firefly’s carrier appointment process is fast and most importantly the carriers will become infused in your agency in a way that will actually help you win and keep more business.

So, while there are a lot of things agents love about Firefly, Carrier Infusion is often why they are so excited to work with us.

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