The Good and Bad About Being an Independent Insurance Agent

What’s so great about being a young independent agent today?

Freedom, quality of life, opportunities to grow, challenges and the ability to solve them, the people and relationships built, the compensation, and, of course, the satisfaction that comes with helping others.

What’s not so great?

Burnout, the hard market, worries over the U.S. economy and its impact on business, hiring employees, “unhealthy” competitors in the market, and the “not-so-great” reputation of the industry.

Even with the challenges young agents face today, most (79.8%) told Insurance Journal they would recommend being an insurance agent to another young person.

Young agents also report feeling unsure about 2025. In fact, their outlook on economic conditions in 2025 is much more negative than it was in 2024, the survey found.

Just 14.6% of young agents reported feeling “very optimistic” about the outlook of the U.S. economy in 2025, while another 28.6% reported feeling “optimistic.” That’s considerably different than the 50.0% of young agents responding to the 2024 survey who said their view on the U.S. economy was “very optimistic,” with another 18% reporting “optimistic” feelings about the economy last year. Nearly half (46.0%) reported feeling “cautious” and 10.8% do not feel optimistic about 2025’s economy at all.

Young agents are typically an optimistic crowd, and despite their outlook on the U.S. economy, optimism still ranks high. When it comes to their career choice, 44.1% of young agents responding to this year’s survey reported they feel “very optimistic” on the outlook of their career (down slightly from 45.3% of in the 2024 survey).

Young agents reported feeling more positive about the future of the agency system this year. According to the survey, 32.9% of young agents felt “very optimistic” about the future of the agency system compared to just 28.7% in the 2024 survey.

Pressures surrounding U.S. economic trends may be leading to mixed feelings over income growth in 2025. Some 47.4% of young agents reported feeling “very optimistic” that their income will be greater in 2025 than in 2024, with another 32.9% feeling “optimistic” that their income will rise this year over last year’s. In last year’s survey, more than half (55.2%) of young agents believed their income would be greater than the previous year.

The annual Insurance Journal survey polls the opinions and views of independent agents 40 years old and younger. More than 225 young agents responded to this year’s online survey during March.

What do young agents say about their careers in insurance?

Insurance Journal shines the spotlight on a few, including a former teacher turned producer, a lawyer turned coverage expert in cyber and management liability, a former college baseball player whose competitive spirit in sports gives him a homerun in sales, and a hobby farmer who found his passion works as a specialty agency.

Teacher to Producer

Joey Maxwell, 33, didn’t know he’d enter the insurance world. After college, he signed up to teach 7th grade English, part of Teach for America’s Teacher Corps program.

After completing his two-year commitment, Maxwell began polling friends, family, and mentors about future career possibilities. Surprisingly, many recommended the insurance industry.

“I was like, ‘What do you mean, with State Farm?'” he asked. “I didn’t know my job existed.”

After some research on job roles within the insurance industry, Maxwell found his first producer role with an independent agency.

“At one point I wanted to be a lawyer, but this [role] allowed me to play armchair attorney,” Maxwell said. “The job kind of forces you to know a lot about a lot of things,” which is something he loves.

Maxwell moved right into production. “The typical role is come and start on the service side of the business, spend a couple years learning what you’re doing, and then switch to producing,” he said. “But I was like ‘just throw me in the deep end.’ I’m either going to kick my way to the surface or I’ll drown.” He made it to the surface and more.

Today, Maxwell serves as partner at Atlanta-based Sterling Seacrest Pritchard, the largest privately-held independent insurance broker in Georgia.

Doing it all has helped Maxwell learn the insurance business fast. After attending a two-week education program, he jumped at the opportunity to follow senior brokers to client meetings where he became a “fly on the wall,” listening and learning.

He also believes his interactions with carriers helped pave the way to success. “I was very fortunate, I think, that we do not have a centralized marketing [division] in our firm,” he said. That forced him to interact with carrier underwriters often. “That was highly educational–learning how different policies, different coverages interact and how claims worked,” he said. “I developed several really good underwriting relationships.”

Maxwell doesn’t recommend jumping right into production to other young professionals. “I don’t regret doing it myself, but I wish I had recognized how little I knew beforehand,” he said. He advises others to learn technical details of coverage early and never stop learning.

“I still go into my mentor’s calendar at the beginning of every week. If there’s a meeting that looks interesting, I ask him about it and then just listen.”

Legal Adjacent

When Katie Pope, 32, took the bar exam after graduating from law school, she expected to wait for the results and then find a job as an attorney. But as she was waiting for her exam score, she was offered a job in what was pitched as a “legal adjacent” industry.

“I had a great conversation with a guy [at Lockton] who ended up being my boss about cyber, fiduciary duty, and D&O,” Pope said.

Pope’s background in law has helped her become an expert in contract interpretation for cyber insurance and management liability and also claims.

Today, Pope is the vice president of executive lines at Los Angeles-based The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers, where she continues to hone her legal skills in cyber coverage as well as D&O, E&O, and EPL coverage. While she produces a bit of business on her own, her primary role is to be a resource to other producers at the firm.

Pope admits that the cold- calling aspect of production is her top skill. “It definitely takes a certain type of person,” she said. “I have a little bit of that in me, but I also do enjoy being an expert and a resource,” she added, noting that she plans to build a book of her own one day because of her coverage expertise.

What she enjoys the most about working on the agency side of the business is having the chance to touch every aspect of life. “Insurance is just so topical,” she said. It’s the backbone of the economy. “Because companies won’t take risks unless they’re able to mitigate that risk,” she said. “Everybody needs these different coverages to protect themselves because nobody wants to get hit with millions of dollars in legal fees or an actual settlement amount.”

Her advice to young agents: Be curious. “I know getting into insurance kind of sounds boring on its face,” she said. “But if you think about how it impacts all these other aspects of life, the economy, how companies run and how they take risks, it makes it more enjoyable.”

Insure What You Love

Terren Moore, 28, found a way to do what he loves in insurance. Moore started hobby farming when he was just 15 years old and became a member of the Texas Farm Bureau. He didn’t grow up farming but had a passion for the outdoors.

At 21, he landed a job as an insurance advisor with the Texas Farm Bureau, and four years later he opened the doors to his own independent agency, MFI Agency in Greenville, Texas. MFI specializes in the agricultural industry. “We insure anything agricultural–so feed stores, wholesale nurseries, livestock haulers, farms, ranches, that’s our bread and butter,” he said.

After spending some time speaking to other agency owners about the process of starting an agency–the risk, the reward, the time it took to be successful–Moore knew he wanted to be an agency owner. “I was 24 at the time. I was young and said, ‘Well, if I’m ever going to do this, now’s the time,'” he said.

“I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit since I was 15 years old,” he said. That’s when he first began selling produce from his own hobby farm. “I just always enjoyed the freedom of doing my own thing.”

Moore said he loves helping agricultural businesses find the right coverage for their unique risks. “Being an agency owner is awesome. I enjoy growing something that I’m passionate about.”

“The hardest part of being an agency owner is having the focus and discipline to say no,” he said. Moore said he could quote any piece of business that walks in the door, but that would distract him from the end goal. “What I want most is to insure agricultural businesses, so those are the kinds of accounts I want.”

His advice for young agents: always keep the end goal in mind. “That’s probably the most important thing that I did,” he said. Instead of working for another agency, earning a steady salary that provides comfortability, he kept his end goal top of mind. “I always knew the end goal for me was to be an owner.” So, why not start there, he said.

Competitive Spirit

For 29-year-old Winston Welch, a commercial insurance broker at Crest Insurance Group based in Tucson, Arizona, the competitive nature of a sales-driven job has been a good fit. He grew up in sports, playing baseball in college.

After college, Welch spent a few years working for a sport-related technology firm before he landed at Crest. He knew Crest CEO Cody Ritchie from his childhood neighborhood. “I reached out to him just to see what different opportunities there are in insurance, and I really liked what I heard about the company,” he said. “It seemed like a new opportunity where I could get into a profession, have a stable career, but also really help people.”

Another thing Welch values is the firm’s culture. Crest Insurance Group was named an Insurance Journal Best Agency to Work For in 2023.

“It’s [important] to be with a company that you like,” Welch said, and management plays a big role in that. “Our CEO, he’s really into sports, so the company’s almost run like a sports team. It’s like he handpicked a roster.”

Welch has spent some time working on small business accounts and is moving toward building his larger account book of business. He enjoys the competitive nature of large commercial insurance. “It’s kind of exciting; it’s almost like your own little mini company by myself.”

Welch admits he’s “super competitive,” so transferring that skillset to a job that holds the ability to earn more than just a regular salary is ideal.

“To be able to wake up each day and decide the more effort you put into this, the more money you’re going to make, and the more people you’re going to be able to help out is probably a good transition,” he said. “I am happy to work all the time. I know that the harder you work in a sport, the better you’re going to be. And the harder you work in insurance, the more money that you make, and the more people you’ll help.”

Concierge Service

Service is key for any independent agency but it’s non-negotiable when it comes to serving the ultra-high-net-worth market, said Sam Villagrasa-Petroski, 29, who serves as vice president of strategy and growth at Concierge Insurance Solutions based in Wyneewood, Pennsylvnia.

Nine months into his position at the firm, an agency formed exclusively for the ultra-high-net-worth insurance space, Villagrasa-Petroski’s focus is not only to grow the agency’s book but also serve as the liaison for agency-carrier relations. His training and background as an underwriter and sales manager for Chubb has helped him to understand the needs of a carrier while also protecting the agency’s clients, he said.

His carrier experience allows for a better understanding of what the carriers want and need. “That’s a very difficult thing to do if you’ve only been a producer all your life, or an account manager, because you’ve only seen one side,” he said. “I can more or less speak the underwriting language that a lot of these carriers are looking for, which helps in procuring even the most difficult to the easiest solutions.”

In the ultra-high-net-worth market, or any market, understanding underwriting and gaining technical expertise on coverage will help build a book of business, he said. Plus, insurance is still a relationship driven business. “You still have to be able to add value by servicing clients in the way they want to be,” he said. “The amount of technical expertise needed in our field today is more than ever.”

He said the opportunity to advance and succeed in the industry is the best it’s ever been for driven young professionals. “If you have those [technical] skills, you’re going to be able to grow your book of business very quickly,” he said. With today’s growing talent gap, the opportunities are “massive” for the right person, he added.

Captive to Independent

For third-generation insurance agency owner Joe Iten, 32, watching his dad turn his agency from captive (Nationwide) to independent was not easy.

Iten, a commercial lines agent for his family’s agency, Florida-based Iten Agency, was in high school at the time but became a “fly on the wall” watching and learning as his dad navigated the transition.

“I wasn’t involved in the agency at that point–it started around 2015–but it was a very hard time to go through,” he said. However, the change ended up as a blessing, he said, opening many new doors for the agency to grow.

“We were able to move from a more homeowners-focused agency to doing small commercial, and it gave us the ability to work with brokers and do some larger commercial,” Iten said. By the time Iten joined the family business, he was able to jump right into commercial insurance sales.

Iten said he has been fortunate to have a mentor in his father, which has helped him the most. He tells other young agents entering the field to find a mentor and get involved with the industry. “Get involved in your state association,” he said. It’s there that young professionals meet others who can help them in many ways.

“I have found in my time in the industry that more often than not, the agent down the street is going to be more of a friend than a competitor,” he said. “There’s been times where I’ve had people come to me, send me a policy, and I’ll pick up the phone and say to the other agent, ‘Hey, I’m getting a call on X, Y, and Z. What’s your take on this?’ Or, ‘I wanted to bring this to your attention.”‘

Working together can be beneficial to both agents, he said. “At the end of the day we’re helping the consumer, and I have found a lot of value in that,” he said. That’s his favorite part about being an agent, he told Insurance Journal. “I love the ability to help business owners navigate challenges, and its rewarding to be able to help them in a time of need.”

Passion for Health

Walter Winter, 39, jokes that while the other kids wanted to be firefighters or astronauts growing up, he wanted to be an insurance broker. Not really, but what he did want to do was lead a healthy life.

“I’ve always had a passion for people’s health,” said Winter, a senior vice president and partner at Woodruff Sawyer. “There was a point where I actually invested in a CrossFit gym. So, employee benefits was a natural transition,” he said. “It is more than insurance; it’s making people healthier.”

While he doesn’t work to protect a company’s balance sheet, he does protect their people–and that’s “super important,” he said. That’s the good part of employee benefits, he told Insurance Journal. The bad might be the emotional side of a difficult claim situation.

“Sometimes we end up helping employees with really tricky claim issues, and you get to know them through that process, and we get to see people at their best and their worst,” Winter said.

“It could be helping a growing family having a baby–helping them navigate what that looks like from a payment perspective and the insurance–or it could be helping people when someone’s going through cancer treatment, trying to figure out how to get a specialty medication covered in an affordable way,” Winter said. “Benefits is a lot more emotional than property/casualty insurance,” he added. “Both are tremendously important, but different.”

Winter recommends to young people entering insurance–whether in the property/casualty space or employee benefits–to make sure to find a helpful mentor.

“I don’t know if I want to use the word mentor, but I think someone who is willing to invest in you because they care about you,” he said.

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