VU Resources

Virtually every industry has a model for comparing results to other businesses in the same field. For the independent agency system, that model is the Big “I” Best Practices program.

What does the future of insurance hold for we mere mortals? Your guess is as good as mine, but we need to imagine it. Technology and the world in general are changing quickly; insurance has historically been very slow to respond to change – but we can’t wait like we could in the past. Take…

Too many agents try to reap the benefits of their agency value before they are ready, selling the goose even though it is capable of laying many more golden eggs. An offer for a healthy, profitable agency before an owner is required to sell is like someone offering you 12 golden eggs if you would…

According to the 2014 Future One Agency Universe Study, 14% of independent agencies do not have a perpetuation plan in place. But industry experts estimate the number is much higher.

Many agents with successors in place are not so sure that their successors can manage the business as well as the older agents or sufficiently enough to assure the older agent a secure retirement payout. What do THEY do in this very sensitive situation?

Is the future positive for small, traditional agencies? As with most broad looking-into-the-future answers, it depends. It depends on knowledge, commitment, and recognizing reality. For example….

We often hear of agencies ‘merging’ as a form of perpetuation planning for an owner. When we analyze most of these ‘mergers’, we find that they were acquisitions in disguise to protect the ego of the selling owner or to keep the clients from believing that they had been “sold.”

I have unfortunately worked with the families, estates and partners of several agency owners who have passed away. Most, but not all, of the deaths occurred unexpectedly. In all cases, the person who passed left their families, estates and partners with far more problems than necessary. So my question to you is this, if you…

When the current owners wish to perpetuate the agency without severe financial impact to the new owners, they sometimes attempt to gift, discount or bequeath ownership interest instead of charging full value for the agency’s stock and, thereby causing a taxable event to the existing owners while forcing the new owners to pay for the…

Agencies who have Perpetuation Plans in place that will transition agency management and ownership from one generation to another often fail to properly implement the Transition Plan or do it in a way that actually hurts the perception of the agency. There is a way to complete the Perpetuation Plan with a Transition Plan that…