Farmers Insurance Group Review
By David Duford - January 03, 2023 - 5 Mins Read
Are you considering a career selling insurance with Farmers Insurance?
Perhaps you’re wondering if a sales career with Farmers makes sense for your insurance sales goals?
If so, you found the right article!
I am going to provide you with all of the details you need to better understand what it’s like to sell insurance with Farmers so that you can determine if a career with Farmers Insurance makes sense for you.
Let’s get started.
NOTE: Are you an aspiring or new insurance agent looking for more insight on how the insurance sales industry works? Check out my free New Insurance Agent Resource Guide to help answer many of your questions (as well as ones you didn’t know you had!)
PS: Review more insurance sales job opportunities in my detailed round-up article here.
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Those who work at Farmers tend to rate the experience highly, as the company has a 3.6 out of 5-rating on Indeed and 3.4 out of 5 on Glassdoor.
These ratings are about average for insurance firms, and reviews rate the work-life balance highly.
Employees appreciate the training and support, although they warn that your commissions will vary based on your location.
What Products Are Sold
Farmers offers a long list of insurance types that you can sell for commission.
Auto Insurance
Automotive insurance can protect your vehicle in the case of an accident or collision, as well as provide coverage for medical payments and other factors.
Business Insurance
Business insurance can be customized to help you protect your investment and property.
Home Insurance
Home insurance can provide protection for covered causes of loss, both for the building and your possessions.
Landlord and Rental Property Insurance
This type of insurance is designed for landlords, providing coverage for potentially costly tenant-related problems.
Life Insurance
Life insurance provides your beneficiaries with a payout in the case of your death.
Motorcycle Insurance
This insurance provides coverage for your motorcycle and can also cover related injuries.
Recreational Insurance
This insurance can apply to motorhomes, ATVs, travel trailers, and boats. It also provides flexible coverage options.
Renters Insurance
This insurance covers your possessions in case a covered situation occurs to the property, even if you do not own the building.
Umbrella Insurance
Umbrella insurance covers the gaps in your other insurance policies, helping to protect your future earnings as well as your assets.
There are also multi-line insurance discounts.
How Do You Find Prospects?
All agents can take advantage of professional coaching, which helps them gain the skills to find prospects.
This includes local leadership that enables you to create a personalized business plan and find a location that will maximize your chances of attracting candidates and success.
There is also the award-winning University of Farmers, which provides extensive insurance sales training. The training combines classroom, online, and in-the-field training.
There is no indication that Farmers provides insurance leads for you, but the training and support they provide helps you learn useful strategies to find them yourself.
Special Marketing and Sales Programs
The training provided via the University of Farmers helps give you the sales and marketing skills that you need to work as an agent.
They also provide you with industry-leading training. Access to a Recruiter or District Manager who acts as a business coach provides you with further assistance in both of these respects.
Your District Manager assists you with a great deal of marketing, including local agency placement and branding.
They will also help you with business development and execution to ensure that you get off on the right foot.
This assistance extends to all aspects of setting up your agency, from business planning and choosing a location to hiring agency staff.
Commissions
Like many insurance marketing organizations, Farmers does not explicitly list the commissions that you earn as an agent anywhere.
According to Indeed, insurance agents earn an average of around $57,600 a year, while agency owners make an average of $100,800 annually.
You can also earn renewal commissions, which require minimal effort on your part.
You earn commissions via sales from Farmers, in addition to the opportunities for monthly and annual rewards and bonuses. There is even the ability to gain travel incentives.
There is also an incentive bonus program for veterans to increase the appeal for those who have served.
Bonuses and financial support programs
Depending on the program, you can take advantage of one or more of several bonuses and opportunities for financial support.
These include marketing bonus opportunities, agency start-up bonus opportunities, three years of monthly financial support bonuses for new agents, the opportunity to sell the agency you own, and potential contract value.
Agency owners who are former Farmers employees or veterans can also receive a bonus of up to $6,000.
It is important to note that the commissions and bonuses will depend on where you are located.
Farmers encourage those who are interested to contact their local District Manager to get specifics on their area.
To increase your commissions, you can sell more products, as Farmers does not seem to limit the commissions that you can earn. The training and professional support should help you with this growth.
Is Farmers a Scam, Pyramid Scheme, or MLM?
Farmers is not a scam, insurance MLM, or pyramid scheme, since it has been around for 90 years.
Additionally, the company invests in its agents by providing best-in-class training and support, and it is highly rated on employee-rating websites.
How To Quit Farmers Insurance Group
There are many reasons you may want to quit Farmers Insurance Group, for example, you ran out of money to invest in leads, you ran out of prospects to sell to, or you simply found that the business of selling insurance wasn’t a good fit for you.
The good news is, quitting Farmers Insurance Group is easy.
Here’s how to do it.
First, start by doing your due diligence and find another insurance agency to work for. We recommend you review our Free Agent Resource Guide here for tips on finding a quality insurance agency to join.
Once you find a new agency or carrier to join, you can go ahead and switch your affiliations.
You should keep in mind that as an insurance agent, you are licensed by the state and not by the company. No insurance agency can prevent you from stopping your affiliation with it and doing business with another organization.
You may need to cancel the affiliation with Farmers Insurance Group. The termination usually needs to be filed within a 30 day window, however canceling affiliation is not always mandatory.
To become properly appointed with the new insurance carrier or agency, you simply complete contracting with the new insurance carrier.
Typically, the window for companies to process affiliations is very short, with most companies approving insurance agent carrier appointments within 1 to 2 weeks on average.
Bottom line, quitting Farmers Insurance Group is no big deal. Simply find another organization that’s better suited to your insurance sales career goals, submit contracting through the new organization, and within the next few weeks, you’re good to go and can stop doing business with Farmers Insurance Group.
Companies Like Farmers Insurance Group
Let’s take a look at some insurance agencies and companies similar to Farmers Insurance Group in case you’re interested in doing a comparison.
Symmetry
Symmetry Financial Group is an insurance marketing organization based out of Swannanoa, North Carolina.
SFG specializes in several life insurance markets, primarily the mortgage protection insurance market. The company also offers final expense insurance, a type of whole life insurance designed to cover medical bills and funeral expenses after the policyholder’s passing.
Bankers Life
Bankers Life was established in 1879 in Chicago, Illinois. The company is a subsidiary of CNO Financial Group.
Bankers Life offers life insurance, long-term care, annuities, Medicare (Supplements, Advantage Plans, Part D prescription drug coverage), critical illness insurance, as well as vision and dental plans. It targets the senior market, typically people age 60 and older who are near retirement.
People Helping People (PHP)
People Helping People was established in 2009 in Northridge, California. The company serves the middle markets for insurance-based financial planning. It focuses on term insurance, index universal life insurance, and fixed indexed annuities.
American Income Life (AIL)
American Income Life, a wholly owned subsidiary of Globe Life Insurance, is a major provider of supplemental life insurance. The company was founded in 1951 and is headquartered in Waco, Texas.
American Income Life’s core markets are labor unions, credit unions, and associations for insurance solicitation. Its insurance products include life insurance and supplemental health.
New York Life
New York Life, established in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the country. It offers premium life insurance, long-term care insurance, retirement income insurance, and investment plans, including annuities, mutual funds, and ETF saving plans.
USHEALTH Advisors
USHEALTH Advisors is a wholly-owned national sales and distribution subsidiary of USHEALTH Group, one of the largest employers of health insurance agents in the United States.
USHEALTH offers individual health coverage plans and a number of related supplementary products. It specializes in marketing innovative and affordable health coverage plans. The company is focused on providing healthcare solutions to individuals and families, as well as self-employed and small business owners.
Equis
Equis is a marketing organization for independent insurance agents and agency builders.
Its main product is mortgage protection life insurance, designed to reduce or eliminate the threat of foreclosure or eviction if the insured passes unexpectedly. The company also offers final expense, living benefits, and indexed universal life insurance products.
Freedom Equity Group
Freedom Equity Group, based in Arroyo Grande, California, is an independent marketing organization (IMO) that contracts with insurance companies to promote and distribute a range of life insurance products.
Freedom Equity Group focuses on selling life insurance and annuities. Its main product is indexed universal life insurance, a form of permanent coverage that provides a cash value in addition to life insurance.
My Thoughts
Now that you know a little more about how Farmers Insurance works, let me provide my experience as an independent agent (unassociated with Farmers) on what you should be concerned with.
Do you own your book of business?
This is a little known issue among new agents getting into the insurance sales business.
At the end of the day, you are in business for yourself as an insurance agent.
With most insurance agencies you’re responsible for finding your prospects, convincing them to do business with you, and then keeping them on the books.
The way I see it, it only makes sense that you own those clients in the form of future commissions.
If you leave, do you keep your future commissions?
However, there are many insurance sales organizations that take possession of your future renewal income you would have learned if you decide to sever your relationship with that agency.
This dirty little trick is why many agency owners are filthy rich and other agents suffer.
It’s simply because they lose what money they would have made from the efforts they put in early on because they did not own their book of business.
While I’m not certain how Farmers Insurance operates in this regard, it nevertheless is a good idea to ask recruiting agencies what happens if you’re terminated.
Will you continue to get paid all of those future commissions you would have been paid had you stayed on?
This is always a question you should ask any insurance agency you’re considering being a part of.
The perils of selling for one company
While Farmers Insurance is a fantastic company, there are some inherent limitations any agent will experience if they only represent one company.
With Farmers Insurance, you are a captive agent. This means that you only contractually can represent Farmers Insurance and no other company.
And while there’s advantages to that, there are some disadvantages, most blatantly the inability to most effectively help your clients.
When you have a limitation of product availability, you cannot help your clients all the time, even if they need help.
Less options = less opportunity
Most companies have unique and special underwriting circumstances that may not accept all applicants, not to mention premium differences that the clients may not be able to afford or appreciate.
This is called being a captive agent. You’re limited to one product and there’s not much you can do with it in some circumstances.
Personally, this is why I am an independent agent.
As an independent agent, I have the ability to shop around using different insurance products with different companies in order to offer my client the best value of all.
Many times, this means I can give my clients a better value product more often, meaning I most likely will sell more coverage as an independent agent.
Summary
I hope you enjoy this article on how an insurance sales career with Farmers Insurance works.
I train new and experienced agents to become top producing agents in final expense, Medicare Advantage, and annuity sales.
If you’d like more information about how my organization works, click the link here.
Make sure to also check out my agent success stories as well as my best selling insurance sales books.
Resources
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