While I don’t imagine that life insurance agents are any worse than the general population, my God what is happening to our country when money has become more important than doing the right thing? There is this presumptuous attitude that if money can’t be made when helping someone, then why continue to help them. In the life insurance industry this shows up most often when an agent can’t seem to find anyone, starting with their own company, that won’t decline a client. They do a little looking around and find someone who can help them and the agent calls me. When they find out that I do have the answer and the resources to get the person approved for life insurance, they don’t refer the client to me but rather start right in with the matter of commission. They almost always get offended if I suggest less than half or in the case of some products where I barely make anything at all I might tell them I’ll be glad to help their client but there isn’t enough money to divide.

Let’s put that in context. Say you go to a doctor and they decide that you should see a specialist for treatment. But they don’t give a referral unless the specialist agrees to pay them 50% of what they make from your patient. Do you hear what I’m saying? They don’t make a referral. They know you need help they can’t provide but unless they can make money from it they will let you suffer. I’m sure there are unethical doctors that do that kind of stuff, but, how self serving, how selfish, how mean, how immoral. I have access to some products and approvals that no other agent in the country can provide. I am a specialist in impaired risk life insurance and have earned some respect in the business over the last 15 years, both from clients and companies, that has allowed me to actually have 53 cards in my deck, one extra ace if you will. I am by no means saying I can do the impossible, but I do have an advantage in some areas over the rest of the life insurance agents.

So, back to the selfish, blood sucking life insurance agents. I know when an agent brings a case to me that they have invested time and if they just refer the client to me with no hooks, they will have lost money for their time. But the client will get what they need, approved life insurance to protect their family or business. I never dismiss the idea of sharing some compensation because the truth is that the agent went a little further than most and actually looked for a way for their client to win. What I do dismiss is a life insurance agent who is so greedy that will actually not tell their client that there’s a solution out there when there clearly is. They would rather let the client suffer than make a referral where they don’t make plenty of money.

The majority would just tell their life insurance client that they aren’t insurable and close the case as is the case with almost all HIV positive clients. A little context again. I work for clients and give advice to clients that, from the get go, I know I’ll never make a dime from. I have helped people get claims paid and have never asked for compensation, actually have turned it down. I have referred clients to life insurance agents that represent companies that I don’t and have never (as in never) asked for compensation. My colleagues think I am just as stupid in this as I am in not making life insurance recommendations based on the amount of compensation a company pays, or what I get out of it. “You’re leaving money on the table”, they say. Well, maybe I am stupid, but my belief and my business have a hung a shingle that what goes around comes around and meeting the client needs are the job. Doing the right thing is its’ own reward. Because of those values I do share compensation when there’s compensation to share, because it helps the client.

Bottom line. I work as a life insurance agent and that’s how I feed my family, but business balances out over the year between cases where I make a good pay day and cases where I lose money. Life insurance agents whose primary interest in you as a client is the money they might make are, from my perspective, selfish. If you have been abandoned by a life insurance agent because they can’t get the job done for you and something tells you they may not have tried all the avenues, well, you’ve just found one of the other avenues. Call or email me directly. My name is Ed Hinerman. Let’s talk.