Andy NearyI help insurance professionals turn brand awareness into business growth.

Make sure you’re putting your clients first and commissions second.

24 Jul 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:17

This YouTube monologue (creator: Andy Neary) critiques the independent insurance agency model, arguing that agency-level financial incentives (commissions, bonuses) can bias agents away from prioritizing clients. The speaker describes initial idealism about agency independence and an early realization that agency needs and payout structures create conflicts of interest for agents.

Chapters

What do all of us as consultants or representatives for our clients, what we really want to do is do what's right for our client. And so at the time we were naive enough to think that the independent agency system has to be a better way. Right. Because now as an independent agent, I'm going to have the plethora of freedom to be able to sell multiple different competitive client or competitive programs for my client. And for sure going to find them the best solution. And quickly entering that space, you realize that it becomes more of a camp of each independent agency has its primary bread producer for their agents because of not just commissions, which we could talk about why commissions I don't really love, but agency bonuses and other cream that gets added to the. To the. To the revenue stream. Bias is advice the broker's giving. Yeah, so now I'm an independent agent, but the agency I work for loves and needs a specific insurance carrier to sell a couple more accounts or to grow that revenue a couple more points. And if you do so as an independent agent, you get a financial win. I didn't love that. That was one of my big eye openers. Moving to the right. And it's like.