Advantages of Becoming a Licensed Agent Affiliate
OK, so you’ve made it this far. Here is the longer rationale for becoming a licensed affiliate. Please take the time to read it over and think about signing up. The time it takes you to read this page (fifteen minutes) will be time well spent, for you and your clients.
Save time
Your practice has probably developed because people see the value in dealing with you. You don’t just quote them one provider for their life insurance business so why would you do that for their travel insurance? If you do, you won’t be doing them any favour, and probably won’t get the business. If you want to present a travel insurance quote properly (and get paid all the commissions), you will need to sign up with all the various insurance providers, and then present the quote. To put together a comparable quote, you will need to log in to the first company’s website with your ID and password, type in your client’s name and trip details, possibly answer more than a dozen medical questions for each traveler (which you probably don’t have accurate information on), and then write down the premium offered. Log in to the next insurance company’s site and repeat the process, another five times. Now, compile and communicate your findings to your client who then asks, “How much would it be with a deductible?”, or any other number of questions that you don’t really know how to answer without imparting with some more of your valuable time. After all this, the sale isn’t guaranteed. But let’s say they do buy from you. Now you have to enter all their information into the insurance company’s site including their credit card information – if they’ll give that to you over the phone. You don’t have time for this, not for a $30 commission. But if half of those possible commissions were sent to you automatically because you uploaded a link onto your website in fifteen minutes? Now that would be a wise use of your time for the following reasons:
Create a new stream of revenue
So how much revenue can you expect from becoming involved? The average travel insurance commission can vary depending on the type of client you refer. Older clients pay more for their travel insurance. So do clients that travel for extended periods of time. This leads many to believe that the ‘snowbird’ couple in early retirement is the ideal client. As an example, a couple in their late 60’s going away for their annual 6 month trip south recently purchased a medical emergency policy for approximately $1400. The commission for this was $210. By simply providing a link on your website you may receive one half to two-thirds of this commission.
It is entirely possible that you have a few regular travelers who are retired amongst your clientele. Those travelers are being asked to pay higher amounts each year, and they become more discerning customers and begin to shop around for their travel insurance coverage, especially if they are taking medications. A dozen retired couples using your link to BestQuote could produce over $1000 per year in easy revenue for you. Lots of your younger clients travel too. Generally, the commission percentage is twice as high as it is with retired travellers but the commission produced might average only $30-40. Another two dozen sales each year could mean earning somewhere around $2000 each year. You probably don’t look for travel insurance sales because it doesn’t pay well for your time. But the sales are waiting there for you within easy reach with the help of our BestQuote system. Once one of your clients comes to our site and receives a quote, they will be identified in our system as your referral for future reference. If they come back to our site without using your help months later, you will still receive credit for the referral. Annual repeat sales will become your recurring revenue.
Meet your fiduciary duty
Obviously, the need for travel insurance is real. Financial losses incurred by travelling without proper coverage can be astonishingly high, seriously impacting client wealth. In industry parlance, this can raise issues of liability concerning an advisor’s fiduciary duty to the impacted client: “You mean the defendant constructed an entire financial plan detailing several risk mitigation strategies and investment approaches for the plaintiff, and yet even though they were licensed to sell travel insurance and knew the plaintiff had plans to travel, he/she never recommended or facilitated that the client obtain travel insurance?” Not smart. We’ve all heard the stories from compliance about some advisor being sued for not offering life/critical illness/disability insurance. Our compliance departments get us to disclose that we are dually licensed, and/or that someone declined to insure upon our recommendation. Why would travel insurance be any less of a fiduciary duty? Once you begin openly discussing it, you’ll be surprised by how many of your clients think they have coverage but actually don’t (by counting on a credit card past age 65, or by buying an accidental injury policy through their automobile association.) Some of your critical illness insurance clients may be forgetting about travel insurance, even though the financial impairment of suffering a critical illness in the US can easily be more costly than their entire critical illness coverage.
The commissions are low on travel insurance sales, you have limited time and can’t be bothered to help someone shop around for a two-week travel insurance plan. So while you do recommend that your client have travel insurance before they go away, you avoid the business. Perhaps you (or your MGA) have a link to a travel insurance company where your customer could buy the insurance. You can send all your clients there to help you meet that fiduciary duty that you have with your clients! Not so fast.
Travel insurance coverage is a contract of definitions. If your client will be defined under the contract as being exempt from coverage, and yet you recommended that all your clients obtain that specific policy when another company’s policy would have covered them – would getting paid a fee to help provide that inferior policy meet your fiduciary duty to act in a reasonable manner? Not without some note taking. Wouldn’t it have been reasonable to offer your customer the ability to choose the coverage which applied to their situation, and at least ask them appropriate questions (and receive written confirmation) concerning exemptions and let them view comparisons of different coverage? That’s what we do. We make it easy for you to mitigate risk – for you and your client.
Cement your existing customers’ business by helping them more frequently
Many of your customers transact business with you only on an occasional basis. Less frequent contact with your customers puts their business at risk. The more involved you are in helping them transact their financial decisions, the higher the chances of keeping their business. You are competing for their attention and business. If they ask about travel insurance and get turned away because you can’t help them, their attention gets redirected to your competitors, and you put their future business with you at risk.
You’ve helped them with their life insurance. But they won’t review that with you again for another few years. You’ve helped them put together a plan for retirement savings, and meet with them regularly to review their portfolio. But maybe they aren’t transacting any new business with you anymore. Sending them to their financial institution to buy travel insurance or telling them they should ‘look around’ for it on their own means that someone else is helping them more frequently than you are. General insurance companies provide travel insurance and will do comparable quotes. They also sell life insurance and retirement income solutions (and have posters on the wall suggesting they do, while your customer sits around waiting for them to prepare the comparable travel insurance quote). Don’t send your clients away for help! Soon that other advisor will be asking to review their investments or insurance coverage too.
When your client comes to your website and is able to conduct their travel insurance purchase quickly and easily (or you send them a link to BestQuote via email) it gives your customer another confirmation that you are their go-to advisor for financial matters.
Earn a larger share of your customers’ business
Helping your customers as often as you can helps cement the rest of the business they are already doing with you. It also helps you earn the business they aren’t doing with you. Each time your customer purchases a policy through our site, it will help you get closer to their other business; not the other advisor who sells them travel insurance getting closer to the business they have with you. Maybe it’s a question about their portfolio that they ask you about, instead of asking their current advisor. Honestly, the more often you enable your customers to perform a satisfactory purchase, the closer you are to the rest of their business.
When you provide a link to us from your website, as soon as the visitor comes to our website, the header on our site will promote you as the one helping them conduct their travel insurance search. For example, it will show “BestQuoteTravelinsurance, brought to you by Such and Such Wealth Management”. We perform the service, you get the credit. We only help sell travel insurance, and our Affiliate Referral Agreements prohibit us or any of our affiliated companies from dealing with our/your customers concerning any other financial products.
Attract new customers to your practice
Ok, so doing more frequent business with your customers is good for cementing your existing business and perhaps earning more of the business those customers aren’t currently conducting with you. As your client’s get older, chances of them wanting to consolidate their business under one advisor gets higher – so the advisor that is helping them most often has an advantage over any other. The client’s that you have that are retired don’t conduct as many purchases of financial products as they used to, but when they do they are probably fairly price sensitive. Whether it’s because they are on a limited income, or it’s more about the thrill of telling their friends they found the best deal, retirees do shop their business around. They have the time for it, and yes they can use the internet. If you don’t lead them to the best choice, they’ll try to find it on their own. Of course, if you have helped them find the best deal, they might tell some of their friends about your website, helping to introduce you to new clients.
There is another way to use our service to help you find new (insurance or investment) clients. Begin by helping someone with their travel insurance needs, and evolve the relationship from there into a bigger one. You’ll be surprised by how many retirees need help and are willing to accept your business card (and use it) when you can easily engage with them about their travel plans and help them address their need for travel insurance. You’re out golfing and get paired up with a couple golfers that are clearly retired, and obviously meet your definition of ‘targeted client’? As you make idle conversation, you ask whether they travel. They do, often. You ask them what they do about travel insurance, and they tell you their experience. You let them know that your website can help them source the best quote they’ll find for travel insurance, pull out a card and offer it to them. When they go to your website they find all sorts of information about who you are and what services you offer, click on the travel insurance link that you’ve provided and find out you were right - you can help them.
The value you can immediately provide to someone through the use of a comparable quote for travel insurance is very real. That couple in their late 60’s that was described above that paid $1400 for their annual travel insurance? The 69 year old male was taking one medication for high blood pressure, his 67 year old spouse was perfectly healthy. Some companies don’t want to provide that coverage at a low rate. Other’s will. The way the quote came out, the best premium was $1386, then $1543, $1667, $1698,$1761, $2240 and finally $2431. More than $1000 difference, all for comparable coverage. So that new customer conducts their business with your help the next time they need coverage and you help them save a few hundred dollars each year from that point on. Of course you can phone them each time and thank them for their business, asking them if they need anything else at the same time. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they do. That’s really up to the quality of the services you provide, and how close they are to their other advisor(s). But selling travel insurance does help people mitigate risk. That’s the job you’ve chosen for yourself, to help people in the event that something goes wrong financially, or in the event that nothing goes wrong financially. Using our travel insurance website helps them make a quality purchase quickly and easily in the comfort of their own home. Saving them money will help you earn their business.
This is the easiest way to add a new financial product to your existing services, or to improve upon the way you currently help your clients with their travel insurance needs. It’s quick. It’s easy. Just sign up.
Once approved, we will send the link to provide to your clients, preferably on your website although it can also be emailed to your clients or even described and provided over the phone.