Bidder Selection

The purpose of competitively bidding insurance is not to get the lowest price. It is to get an insurance program, and the necessary service, that fits your needs at the best available price.

Agents have a contractual agreement with the carriers that they represent. Most carriers are represented by many agents. Some carriers are direct writing or captive carriers meaning that their agents can only represent that carrier. When working with agents, our objective is to find the knowledgeable agent who has the most "clout" with a particular carrier. That agent will be the one that will get the best coverage at the lowest price.

Insurance companies, in general, don't like to receive submissions from many agents for the same account. We have found that companies will do their best when they are dealing with an agent who they know, trust and respect.

What can you, the client, do to take advantage of these situations? You have many options available. Remember our objective, to find the agent who has the most "clout" with the carrier. Through agent interviews and other discovery techniques, we should be able to determine this.

Once we have found our agent, we can give them exclusive authority to deal with that carrier or carriers. Should you feel that you want to grant the incumbent agent authority for specific carriers, you can do that, keeping in mind this agent is the person you will be dealing with on a regular basis in the future.

We recommend that you consider this scenario, it seems to work but, at the same time, it must meet the test of fairness.

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