Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

You’ll be lucky to get the 3% or 5% for doing nothing. You will appreciate it on the 15th and 30th when the renewal comp drops 8% from why I heard. We do a good job in the call center. Ivan see it now you will be the first to be a cry baby Jwqf

There is an interesting quality component embedded in this conversation. When examined by loss ratio the lowest is in the online channel. Next is call center. The highest loss ratio by channel is the agency channel.

I wouldn’t be buying anything Big, The policyholder center wasn’t schedule to roll out until 2023-2024.

I hope agents have a lot of $$$ put away. I know the SFPP transition will be within next two years it been in the oaks for five. They are slashing expenses to get down to Gieco’s 24% ratio. Operations is almost done looks like the other 7% is coming from agents renewal comp. This is crazy, I left systems two years ago, I never thought they could pull it off. They having been baking this agency plan for a while looks like they are ready to say, Its about the next 100 years, not the old State Farm you know. Crazy. Good Luck guys and gals there are other opportunities outside State Farm.

I’m referring to my ACTUAL contract, mo--n. Not the made up one this thread is based on. The AMDD portion of the contract pays me 3% to service this c-ap that gets placed on the books. The service level is elevated because of the poor quality. My costs are over 3%, even if I’m able to complete the necessary signature work and keep the business.....which is rare. As it stands now, I get 3%, but then get a chargeback when the policy lapses. But the incompetent who put it on the books gets paid. And you want to tell me agents are the problem.

It’s servicing you mo--n, Service comp getting cut in half. Unbelieveable

What I see come across my desk as an agent tells me that policies purchased by customers online are very poor and MOST lapse before 1st renewal. They never get multilined.

That being said, the stuff the call center writes through Quiote and Bind is worse. Never get required signatures. Required coverages are omitted. They create a lot of futile work in the agent’s office..... for no pay.

Will they still do AIPP I just started last year or is everything getting adjusted?

Does anyone know if they going to pay a bonus on top of the 4%?

The middleman is the problem. Call centers are inefficient because they don’t have talent or incentives. Agencies are more efficient but still make mistakes. Direct customer interface or customers interfacing with AI might work. Add simplified auto and home policy forms, and stuff will be much better for the customer.

Keep thinking that

Yep, they are rolling right along, got a renters policy in from them yesterday, only three mistakes had to be corrected, reached out to the policyholder to correct it and they were so frustrated they just cancelled the policy. Agents are not going anywhere anytime soon. Call center employees have very little incentive to do it right, just fast.

Policyholder center rolling out faster than anticipated, better prepare, things are going to change rapidly. Will be totally different than you know today. Look at 2020.

People in the company have a very very positive view of agents and what they do, at least in Systems and technology. Our online capabilities will rapidly improve over the next few years, but we are 5 years out before anything like this should be entertained. Plus we know agents provide the customer service and cover our poor systems. I’ve never heard anything say anything that wasn’t positive overall of the value of agencies. We just need to give customers options with digital and also remove admin from agents so they can spend more time with customers and less fighting SFPP and Necho etc.

I used to slip my assigned underwriter $1000/quarter in cash, sure made a lot of those pesky non-renewal issues go away. Ahhh, the good old days.

I think the level of response to this memo idea is an indicator of the stress the organization is under.

Employees, good ones, are getting fired. They are being replaced with less qualified people. Agents are under more stress than ever to produce with lower comp levels as a result of the AA05 contract.

It is hard to see and understand each other's worlds. I will say that I think that the memo was produced out of frustration and misinformation about the agency sales force.

Agents are what built the company along with their service and underwriting partners. That is what we used to be considered....partners. Now that culture is being destroyed. Underwriters used to be assigned agents to work with. They knew their agents. Agents used to drive down to the operations center and visit their underwriters and service partners. They would bring food and gifts with them too. There was a real respect and trust that was part of our enterprise.

Now look how these employees are talking about the agents and the agent in turn besmirching the employees. It is really sad to see what we have become compared to what we were.

GSVD- here’s the problem with your scenario, and I am a 34 year agent, who are you going to sell all the financial services to? All of our clients new and old will be so disappointed in our/your level of service provided under that model they sure as hell won’t trust us to sell and service any additional products.

Why is everyone commenting on something so clearly false?

You sound like a great boss, and a genuinely good person overall. Everyone loves salesmen, especially this new generation. By reading your post I can tell you get the big picture. SF couldn't do anything adverse to agents because that wouldn't work for your agency.

This is one of the most ridiculous things put out I have seen in a long time. The company tried a baseline service comp rate of 7% when they rolled out the AA05 contract. They had to adjust that up to 8% base after realizing they mistake. You can not operate an agency on 7%. 4% is absolutely unhear of. Agents across the country would close their offices, fire their staff, and reduce marketing completely. The company would have to absorb those cost along with all of the benefits, pensions, and taxes it would take to replace the agency work force. The liar who wrote this memo should have done their homework better.

Avearage agent book of 3 million. Base comp now 8% = $240,000 before taxes etc.

That is a difference of $120,000 gross to my agency. You know what I would do? Fire my staff and work out of my house (or move in with another agent). My net take home pay would remain the same. Except now I get to do what I love...sales. No more service. No more staff issues. I would get to focus only on trying to make my financial service comp and my scorecard bonus as big as possible.

This is never going to happen because it would completely destroy the brand and the agent presence in the community. Our office are SF in the community. Not some hub in another state.

8% is already a beating for most agents. We have taken a huge haircut compared to previous contract. The company's profits are way up and our auto count is going backwards.

I think I will write a memo myself. It will be about employee pensions being eliminated. You have already cut agency to the bone. Time to look at employee pension benefits. We don't get a pension anymore. Jump on in employees. The water is wwwaaaarrrrmmm.

Going to need a lot more than Good Luck to run an agency on Bank and financial service commissions. You are more than abitout of touch.

I would be an agent that offers all product lines mortgage securities if not will be listed not a full service office.

Dopa- that is exactly what non-agents don’t understand, it is simply not possible to operate an ongoing agency office on new business commission and a token service fee. The company can certainly survive without agents only as a much smaller version of itself. Maybe better to exit the insurance business convert to investment company with shares distributed to policyholders and manage the 100 billion with a total of 75 employees.

I am a retired State Farm agent and a customer. I have watched and felt the evolution of State Farm. I am disappointed. The agent customer relationships is being further eroded. Call centers and the less personal service without any reduction in premium is unsatisfactory. My parents were State Farm clients in the 40s. It has been part of our lives. However I am feeling the gap is getting too wide to continue. I am so sorry for the agents who have served do faithfully.

Either Statefarm is putting out "FAKE NEWS" to scare off old agents to retire soon... Or some new Hot Shot agent thinks it's a great idea to be a sales person only... and collect new commissions only ?? They obviously doesn't know enough to realize insurance agent survive to pay overhead on renewals and new business. F--- off. Plus, I haven't seen this announcement they made to agents in the state farm koolaid circle so sorry Bill and Ted no excellent Adventure here, haven't seen that email yet.

Ceeo- they can try, all kinds of ways to play that game, maybe the indecent agency is in my wife or kids name. Do you know how many SF agents in Florida have seperate Indie agencies- most of them to write lines SF has exited. One things for sure, none of us really know how this distribution system will look in 5-10 years, Anyone who says they do is simply speculating. In the meantime I’ll continue to enjoy the ride and milk this thing for all it’s worth. Peace all.

How many years in row have we had the data integrity memo? You think that's because agents and their staff are showing high degrees of integrity? That's not happening from the low producing slugs. That's coming from the Ambassador crew. There's at least two MOAs I know of who have 40% L/C and were in serious review from underwriting for c-ap practices when they only had one office to manage. I'm glad to have stuffed my AIPP into good investments. Winter is coming.

No worries maybe the mutual fund people can handle the service work oh the hold time is a hour and a half wait, who was the meathead that handled that screw up should be fired.

You are naive. SF will spend any amount over any number of years or decades not to lose. No law firm can withstand the unlimited income and the unlimited patience.

There is no agent in the entire history of SF that has taken more than 5% of their customers with them when they left. That is 96 years of e perience, if you think you can be the first have at it. You will fail like every agent before you.

This is not true, probably from a disgruntled employee. Just like the rumor of tipsor impregnating the secretary..... lies

If you are going to convention why not just ask your executives if they are willing to commit to the company sticking with the current pay schedules for auto and fire policies for the next 5 years? 3 years? I think most agents would be interested in the answer.

This thread has more info than I've ever heard at a team meeting in the last three decades. So thanks all. I can't imagine anyone thinks the OP was real, but there's a fool born every minute. There's the fool who thinks they are more valuable to the company than they are, and he keeps counting on future cash to pay off what he's spending now to grow auto. He looks down on the fool who thinks the company is going to can everybody tomorrow. Both fools think their customers like them so much that they'd leave the company in a second if their agency ever closed. The winding down of the auto and home insurance agent career has been coming for a long time. The company tried to tell you in as many ways as they could. You felt better by laughing when your AFE warned you about self driving cars lowering premiums. They were just giving one possible cause of what would derail your gravy train. When the company figures out the way to wiggle out of its expensive distribution system (and they will), the rest of the market will follow if they didn't slash their sales force already. I wouldn't bet a warm bucket of snot on the long term success of a SF agent turned independent. And when most agents would be forced to make the leap, it will be right after the company offered a huge dividend to its policyholder owners. Think they'll be dying to leave then? You aren't as valuable as you think. No foolin'.

THIS IS NOT TRUE... ITS A HOAX. ITS EITHER FROM DISGRUNTLED AGENT... DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEES... OR GOOSEHEAD RECRUITER.

My biggest takeaway from this thread:

Agents are always looking forward, planning for what might happen, and figuring out how to make it work or find something else. (Some bitter) employees are whiners; complaining about management and agents being unfair to them. They have all the answers but lack the ballls to do anything except complain.

Ok now THAT was funny!

That, my friend, just goes to show you that you don’t understand that that may not be necessary for every sentence that was ever created, but that that often times is very necessary for the structure of that particular sentence, and that using that is a personal preference and that one should not take offense that that is often times used unnecessarily.

Absurd. 1) Contract change was introduced in 1994, and went into effect in 1995 with a two year transition. Hence the AA97. 2) Could you have used the word ‘that’ anymore unnecessarily in the first half of the ‘memo?’

If this really happens, half the agents under 10 yrs (approx 6000) will flip their signs around and become independent paying 20% first year and 12-15 renewal (Goodhead is just one example). Why ten years or less? Because we were handed this sh--ty contract and we know it IS better out there. To think of going to 4% is not only laughable, it's downright stupid on their part.

It's not rocket science people, 100% x 0 has always equaled zero. For all you newbs excited that there will be a mass exodus of agents and you will get their policies are dreaming. They will fill that spot with your millennial team member making 35k/yr. My advice, get a side gig now and try to make that 50% of your income, that way when they pull the trigger, you fire as many team members as you can afford to. You will lose business initially but eventually, you will bottom out. Once you bottom out, there's only one way to go, up, remain status quo or find a new career. Either way, you were prepared for it. Just my 2 cents...

Man I love this thread, it has become my daily entertainment.

What I find interesting and sad at the same time are the negative comments towards an agent that has obviously embraced change and is excited about their opportunity. Instead of being quick to sarcastic comments, try being positive and great full for the opportunity you have. Try adopting and looking for ways YOU can improve and adapt.