Research
Insurance industry insights backed by real numbers, original analysis, and the studies behind them.
How much is an insurance agency worth?
Insurance agencies are priced as a multiple of EBITDA. What that multiple actually depends on, why earnings improvements are levered roughly sevenfold, and the discount buyers apply for owner dependency.
Michael Cavaleri
Compliance
Is it legal to text insurance leads?
The rules changed in 2025 and a lot of published guidance is now wrong. Consent, quiet hours in the lead's timezone, and why an opt-out no longer has to say STOP.
Gerard Cavaleri
AI governance
Can AI sell insurance?
Where the line sits between automated outreach and licensed advice, what the NAIC model bulletin actually binds, and a governance checklist for an agency running AI.
Jace Russell
Retention
Why do insurance agents quit?
Agency staff and new producers quit for opposite reasons — too much work and not enough of it. Separating the two is what makes the retention problem solvable.
Gerard Cavaleri
Systems
How much does insurance agency software cost?
The expensive part of running six systems is not the six invoices. It is the seams between them — the work that has no owner, and the hours nobody bills for.
Michael Cavaleri
Industry research
How are insurance agencies using AI?
Only 9% of 1,300+ independent agency professionals are skeptical. And 85% of policyholders want to be told when AI is involved — a number that disqualifies an entire category of product.
Jace Russell
Building an agency
How to become an insurance agency owner
Contracts, override spread, the economics of the first hire, and why roughly 30% of agents leave inside 90 days — which makes early ramp, not recruiting volume, the thing that decides the year.
Michael Cavaleri
Compensation
How do insurance commission advances and chargebacks work?
Carriers advance 75–100% of first-year commission before the premium that funds it arrives. What a lapse actually costs by month, and why first-quarter persistency is worth more than persistency later.
Jace Russell
Market data
How many Americans don't have life insurance?
Ownership fell from 63% to 51% since 2011 while demand held. LIMRA's data says the blocker isn't awareness — young adults overestimate the price of term life by ten to twelve times.
Michael Cavaleri
Systems
What does an AMS do that a CRM doesn't?
They get compared as competitors. They are not — they sit on opposite sides of the sale. Which half solves which problem, and why most agencies past ten producers run both on purpose.
Michael Cavaleri
Speed to lead
How fast should you call an insurance lead?
21× the odds of qualifying at five minutes versus thirty. A 42-hour industry average first response. The MIT/Lead Response Management study and HBR's audit of 2,241 companies, and why an insurance agency is the business least able to comply.
Gerard Cavaleri
Distribution
IMO vs FMO vs BGA: what's the difference?
Four acronyms, heavily overlapping, used inconsistently by the organisations themselves. What each one means, where the lines genuinely fall, and the five questions that tell you more than the label does.
Gerard Cavaleri