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I am doing a bit of research on independent insurance agencies. Can someone tell me how many agencies would be there with less than $500K in revenues (or $5 million in premiums), and what are their biggest concerns. Any pointers to data sources would also be appreciated. I looked at several discussions on this forum and found them to be of high quality and thought that may be someone can help me as well. Thanks.

You may be able to get data from the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers - http://www.ciab.com/

Independent Insurance Agents of America might also be a resource - http://www.iiaa.org

You may want to try the PIA (www. http://www.pianet.com) Their membership tend to be the smaller and more rural type of agencies overall. I doubt that the council will be much assistance as they target the top 150 agencies with a minimum of 5MM in revenues to be a member. That being said, you may want to contact the Ins. Journal, rough Notes or Bus. Insurance Magazines as each have written many articles over the years about agencies and maybe they may have some limited data. The other point to consider is what is small. You indicated that you wanted less than 500K in revenues but does that mean you want to go down to one man shops or direct writers? How about agencies that do both retail and wholesale sales? Very difficult to point one's finger on a true number, I know the insurance carriers have been trying for years to dissect the marketplace without much luck. Hope you find what you are looking for.

Thanks TheInsKid and Scott.

I am looking only at independent retail agents for my study.

TheInsKid, I have already looked at all the three infomration sources you mentioned, but none of them gives a complete or even semi-complete picture. They haven't got figures in any of their articles, not in any (many) of the articles that I have read. All they have is subjective assessment. Looks like it's going to be really tough for me to figure it out

I appreciate your help.

Another thought...

I seem to recall from someplace that it was a rule of thumb that the average agency had revenue per employee of $30,000.

If that's true then you are looking for agencies with fewer than 17 employees.

You may be able to get data on agencies with less than 17 employees from Department of Labor or the Census Bureau.

Don't accept my number of 30k as gospel. Society of CIC may have access to current ratios. Check out http://www.scic.com/Academy/Publication ... Series.asp. The Producer Profile report may have the ratios. Perhaps another in the Forum has access to such data.

Just a thought.

The average revenue per agency (taken from Best Practices) is between $100,000 and $160,000 per employee. If revenue was only $30,000 per employee, you'd be out of business real fast. Employees salaries alone are over $30,000 so if their revenue was only $30,000 the business would last about a month.

Makes more sense

The Society of CIC's "Academy for ... Excellence" or something like that periodically publishes exactly the material you seek - around $75 - $100.

Have you tried http://www.bls.gov ?

Take a look at:

http://www.researchandmarkets.com

They state the following:

Average annual revenue per employee is close to $200,000.

They just released some information about agents in general. It mught help.

Very few agencies would have revenue of $200,000. Probably less than 10%. Industry average is around $100,000.

jctwindad wrote:Very few agencies would have revenue of $200,000. Probably less than 10%. Industry average is around $100,000.

You got to be kidding me. One producer should make this much money

AGAIN with the money. Why do you ppl even care??? Please refer to my earlier post, "PERCENTAGES DON'T MATTER IF YOU CAN SELL".

I continue to be amazed at the ignorance of some people. Average agency revenue of $100,000 has nothing to do with how much money a Producer or Owner is making. If an agency has $500,000 revenue, with one Owner/Producer, 3 CSRs and a Receptionist, it has average Revenue Per Person of $100,000. The Owner/Producer could be making $300,000, but Average Revenue Per Employee is still $100,000.

So....did you learn to sell by:

1. Reading a book
2. Someone took you by the hand and trained you
3. You were just born to it....a natural. It can't be learned or taught.
4. Someone first taught you about insurance - so you knew the features, benefits, coverages, exclusions in various policies and then, pushed you out the door to sell
5. Taught you all of number 4 AND took you by the hand to learn how to apply the knowledge to the selling arena
6. You took the 3 day insurance wizard licensing class, passed and someone pushed you out the door to sell