Lets cut right to the uncomfortable part and get it out of the way. The fundamental difference between whether Captive or Independent is better for you, comes down to one simple question. Are you an employee, or are you an entrepreneur? Mentally and Financially. That’s it. When you answer this question, I want you to answer this honestly. Not the answer that you want to be, or that you aspire for later on. I mean right now.

When you’re a brand new agent, it’s very important to assess your own personality and known work habits, honestly and truthfully with yourself because this conversation that you have, will likely dictate the outcome of your career. Now I know that sounds dramatic, but if you think about it; most new agents are one bad lead investment away from a financial disaster. So if you’ve sitting been on the fence, I think you should keep reading. Managers too. I’m calling on you to be more open.

This is a conversation that needs to be had more in the beginning phases of the recruiting process. Starting with the first conversation being more about what’s good for the agent rather than selling them on a system and procedure that works for a specific type of person. As a leader or recruiter, you should want the best fit anyways. Agents need to know their options, so I’m hoping this article will help clarify some fundamental basics.

Captive

Captive agencies take a lot of grief. In some cases for good reasons and as they say, they wouldn’t be a cliche if wasn’t true. Yes. Captive agencies tend to have lower commission structures. The logical reason is normally because there is more overhead involved due to, management levels, in most cases, marketing tools for agents. I’ve even seen a base “Salary” that’s really an advance to help agents get started. Its still debt anyway you slice it. But hey for some people it works because they truly need the consistency. If you are in no position to pay for leads and you need live in-person training, this is where most captive agencies can offer you more.

I found the agents who are most comfortable in corporate like atmospheres, with a little bit of sales freedom, bonus opportunities and things like that, can succeed well in Captive environments and have very long, healthy and happy careers for them self. I’m friends with quite a few.

However, if you put an entrepreneurial person who has an internal need to be a business owner, and to grow and build on his or her own terms. This person would have a very hard time functioning inside of a captive office environment would be like sticking a hungry dog in a cage and putting a steak outside of it. This is where independent agency can usually satisfy the needs of some of the industries biggest whales.

Independent

Independent agency is exactly what it says. It’s independence, and the truth is most IMO (Insurance Marketing/Management Organizations) are pretty much the all same, just different leaders. There’s a handful of lead concepts, and a bunch of companies all selling their own version of the same 5 leads types and there’s about $50,000 to $75,000 life insurance agents going after all the same data.

Now that wasn’t meant to negative. I’m independent and I love it. Independent agency tends to require more of a bloodthirsty lion’s mentality than a pretty house cat’s who waits to get fed. There’s a lot of hunting involved with being independent, and the truth is; the fail ratio is significantly higher. But I’m a sicko so I find that to be more exciting.

But if you feel that you catch on quickly and you have a little bit of a savings to back you up, including an investment that you can put into some marketing and leads. You very well could excel quickly and make a hell of a lot more money than you ever would have been captive.

In the first six months of an agent’s career all of the value is in the training

The uncomfortable truth is, when deciding which one you want to be, as I stated earlier you have to be honest with yourself about which one you will function better as being that you’re so new. As I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, in the first six months of an agent’s career all of the value is in the training. If you have an option of having an active lead system with incredible daily training, with in some in-person mentoring for a little bit less in contract, I would take that deal any day of the week. In some cases you can find this in the independent agent world if you look for it.

I hope this outlook is able to help some of you guys out because I certainly know there’s a lot of people sitting on the fence. I would be lying if I didn’t disclose that I started as a captive agent and then leveled up to independent after I learned everything I felt I needed on someone else dollar. Here I am, still breathing almost 10 years later.