I Don’t Do this for the Money

Part of my routine involves talking to insurance agents around the country. Usually I am chasing down a report on an in-force policy and sometimes aligning a client with an agent to sell them a policy. But it’s interesting the telling vignettes I encounter, including two just this morning.

The first today was on behalf of a widow in Tennessee in my effort to get a report on a $300k life policy. She’s got three adult children (who should no longer be dependent on mom) but a year ago bought this policy for over $500/month. My question was does she even need it/can she really afford it, but in doing my homework, left a message for the agent last week. He apologetically returned my call, “I’ve been touring Europe with my wife for the last three weeks and am sorry to be calling so late.” I don’t mind the tardy call near as much as the thought my client financing his vacation through a sale that should have never been made.

Also this very morning I made another call to another agent, this time soliciting his help to sell a disability policy to a doctor client. I got his assistant, since he had just left for the annual fishing trip in southern Missouri for the agency’s top salesmen. I have to guard against oversell from this guy, despite him being very knowledgeable and with a quality company.

Both these remind me of an incident years ago when an agent was replacing a quality policy which I had sold with a poor one just on the eve of the original policy’s anniversary. There was a several thousand dollar dividend paid on the contract date that would be missed when surrender papers were signed, but could be kept if the surrender were postponed just a couple of weeks. When I called to inform him, I got him on his cell phone, on the slopes in Colorado.

There’s a lot of money to be made in insurance, and most of it is in sales. The consumer can swallow exorbitant commissions, because they are hidden; whereas paying a fee for advice is much harder because it’s all out on the table.

Am I jealous? Probably yes, at least a little bit, at times. But I also know that as an impartial advisor I can, “do unto others as I’d have them do unto me”, and I know that “Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give…”. There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes with that, more than from touring Europe, fishing in Missouri, or skiing in Colorado. So part of this may be venting a bit (two such encounters in one morning!), but part is for the record to say, if I did this for the money, I would have never left sales.