How To Find An Auto Insurance Agent

Everyone sees the commercials on tv advertising low cost auto insurance without using an agent, but what if you wanted to deal with an agent? Sometimes auto insurance is just 1 of a few lines that people need and an exclusive or independent agent can give you plenty of options and break it all down for you.

Independent Agent or Exclusive Agent?
Thankfully, unless you live in Massachusetts, you’re going to find that you have more options than you ever thought possible. Now, you just need to determine if you want to deal with an exclusive insurance agent or an independent insurance agent. Both have their own advantages, and I’ll list some of them for you.



Exclusive insurance agent: An exclusive agent works for one company and can only sell policies that this company offers. Some companies that use exclusive insurance agents are Nationwide, State Farm, and Allstate. The benefits of using an exclusive agent is having access to a big name insurance company you’re familiar with. Rates can be all over the board (as is the case with insurance) but it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily pay more to be insured with a major carrier. The downsides are that you can ONLY deal with that one company, therefore limiting your ability to compare rate quotes from other providers both large and small.

Independent insurance agent: Contrary to what the insurance commercials tell you on TV, you can actually save a lot of money using insurance agents. An independent agent works for many companies (insurance pool) and works to find the best rate for the products you need. The benefits are obviously that you have more choices and can find big savings using independents, however the downside, is that you’re not going to get access to the exclusive carriers and the quality of the insurance companies quoting may not be as high as an exclusive carrier.

Finding An Insurance Agent: This is easier than it sounds, and you’ve got quite a few options. Both independent and exclusive agents can easily be found in the Yellow Pages and online. This is a big money business and their job is to reach out to you, and sometimes at a very high cost (you’ve probably seen them on billboards). The exclusive agents have the big budgets so you’re likely to see them all over (i.e. Jim Ins State Farm Agent…etc).

In the Yellow Pages go straight to “Insurance” and go through a few local agents. Don’t hesitate to give more than one a call. It’s great to start with an exclusive agent that works for a company you’re familiar with and start from there. Each agent will ask you a few specific questions to see if you qualify for certain insurance company policies and the quote shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. You can expect to get a little bit of a pitch and there is some pressure to make the sale, but get the agent to save the quote for you and keep calling around. Next try and independent agent, and continue calling until you’re satisfied you’ve found the right coverage at the best rate.

Finding an independent insurance agent online is a bit more difficult because you’ve got A LOT of advertisements and junk to wade through, especially if you’re not looking in the right place. However, major search engines like Yahoo and Google make it easy to type in something like “Santa Monica, CA Auto Insurance” and showing you a list of agents with contact information and directions. You can also go to http://www.iiaba.net/agentlocator/findagent.aspx and easily find an independent agent in your area. Keep in mind, a lot of independents may not have their own web site, but contact information will be available.

Finding an exclusive agent online is much easier, especially if you know what company you want to go with. Just simply go to the insurance company’s website and look for the link that will help you “Find an Insurance Agent” and fill in the data.

Hopefully this article has been helpful for those of you needing to find an agent in your area. Look at the resources below for direct links to helpful sites.

Insurance Agent Resources:

• Independent Agent Locator:
• http://www.iiaba.net/agentlocator/findagent.aspx
  
  Find an Exclusive Insurance Agent:
• Allstate Insurance

  http://agent.allstate.com/agentlocator/searchpage.aspx

• Farmers Insurance

  http://www.farmersagent.com/engagent.aspx

• Nationwide Insurance

  http://nwinsurance.nationwide.com/nwagentlocator/find.asp

• State Farm Insurance

  http://www.statefarm.com/jscript/easysrch.asp