YouTube video (creator: Timothy Schucker) explaining new FCC rules that change lead-generation consent from a one-to-many opt-in to a one-to-one opt-in. The presenter explains how quote-shopping sites and third-party lead vendors will be severely limited or go out of business, warns agents of litigation risk if they call non-compliant leads, and strongly advises agents to either generate their own leads or hire marketers to generate leads in their name. The rule takes effect January 27, 2025.
Questions this video answers
January 27, 2025.
Timothy Schucker.
Change from a one-to-many opt-in to a one-to-one opt-in (express written consent to be contacted by a specific company/agent).
Chapters
Yes, you read the title. Leads are getting banned. The life insurance industry is ruined forever. We all might as well go back and get nine to five jobs. Just kidding. But in this video I am going to break down what's going on with the FCC lead generation ban, what it means for you, how it's going to affect the life insurance business and what you can do to plan for it. So without any further ado, let's dive in and I'm going to open up a couple of articles that I found to kind of explain what's going on. All right guys, so we got a little article right here. Let's kind of dive into what this rule actually means and what, what the law actually passes. Right? So basically what used to happen is somebody would go to a quote shopping website, like for example, if you ever bought car insurance. If I go to Google and I type in buy car insurance, right, it's going to be all of these different, like comparison sites. And a lot of these are kind of, you know, I'm not seeing these as much, but they used to be everywhere, right? Where you would go and you know, for example, here we go, here's one, Mercury insurance. You go in, put a quote, and they're basically going to sell my information to a bunch of different insurance agents. Right? Now the problem with that is I'm going to get a million phone calls from a million different people and I never opted in to be called from those people specifically. You opt in one time and they sell the information to a bunch of people that are now all calling you. It's very frustrating from a consumer perspective. Your phone will never stop ringing and overall it's just not a good experience. Right? So what the FCC did, because a lot of people were complaining about this, and rightfully so, is they changed it to a one to one opt in. So it used to be a one to many opt in. Now it's going to be a one to one opt in. Right? So what that means is if I opt in on a website, only that one company that I agree to be contacted to can now contact me. Right. Hopefully that makes sense. So what's going to happen is a lot of these companies like Insurify or whatever, they are no longer going to be viable. Right. So you can see here, are you currently insured? Yes. No. Whatever. The only way that these people will be able to contact me is if it's only agents from their company. Meaning there's a lot of these quote shopping websites and these lead generator websites are going to go out of business. Business. It's just the only way around it, right. They're just going to have to go out the business because they can't even sell leads anymore. So that's essentially what's going to happen. Now how does this affect you individually as an insurance agent? Well, it's going to increase the overall cost of leads. So buying age leads and things like that, those are going to kind of go by the wayside. It's not going to be possible anymore starting January 27, 2025, which is the date that you can see right here. So starting January 27, 2025, that is when this law is going to take effect. Right. So what the law currently requires, this is basically what we were talking about with the, the one to one opt in where you have to, you have to get a express written consent, which you know is literally just them ticking a checkbox to be contacted by you specifically. Right. So that's what's coming down the pipeline. And again, this takes place starting on January 27, 2025. So we got the time of filming this, we got a little bit over a month. So what's going to happen? Well, a lot of these sites, like for example, or a lot of these lead vendors, like for example, Integrity CRM, I would imagine that that lead source that a lot of agents are relying on is no longer going to be viable. And if you do call, call them, right? If you do call those people, it's not going to be the lead vendor that's responsible, it's going to be the agent. Right? So that's where inside of this doc. All right, so here we go, guys. Is the FCC going to come after me if I call these people? It's not going to be the fcc, right? It's litigators that will sue you. So basically if you call somebody that has not opted in to be called from you, right. If you buy like age leads from one of these sources or you buy from, you know, Integrity Serum or one of these other like lead vendors, it's just aggregating data. It's not the FCC that's going to come after you, but there are going to be people that opt in or give their information to those different sources and then when you call them, they're going to, they're going to sue you. Right? That's essentially how the game works, is it's not like.
You could still buy age leads and potentially be fine, maybe even for a couple months, but it only takes one person. And, and these lawsuits can be tens of thousands of Dollars, Right? So that's essentially the danger that we're having here is again, these, you're still going to probably be able to buy some of these leads. It's not like everyone's just going to close down shop. The bigger players that are like more official, I would imagine that they'll probably close down shop, but there's still going to be like some shady vendors that will still sell these kind of things. And when you call them, you might be fine, but it's one time, it takes one time. And you hit with a $40,000 lawsuit and your business is done. Right? That's the risk here. So here's how you can kind of protect yourself against this. And here's what we are doing and what we're advising all of our clients to do. If you generate your own leads and you become your own lead vendor. If you guys look at this docu, this article right here.
Everyone needs to become a lead generator, period. Right? Every business has to generate their own leads or you need to have someone running ads for you, generating leads in your name because the leads need to be, they need to be opting in to be called by you specifically. That's the key here, right? So everyone's going to have to generate their own leads or have someone generating leads in their name specifically. And so that's essentially what I advise you to do, is either become a marketer yourself or partner with a marketing team like ours who can run the ads for you. We, on every single lead form, the lead form says they check a box that says they agree to be contacted by you and your company. We just add in either your name or your company's name, right? So it's 100% compliant because people are agreeing to be called by your company. And that is the main difference, right? One to one consent, they have to agree to be called by you specifically versus one to many consent where they opt in one time and then a bunch of different companies can then call. So that's what's happening. I know the title made it seem a little bit more dramatic than it might be. The life insurance industry is not ending, but I had to get you guys to click on the video. So it is what it is. The life insurance industry is not ending, but, but it is changing. And if you don't adapt to the times and if you don't figure out how to get leads generating your own or partnering with someone who can generate them in your name, then it's going to be a tough, a tough couple months for you going forward. So that's the video. Take care, guys, and we'll see you in the next one.
