How We Work
Most insurance conversations start with a price. We start somewhere else, because a price on its own is not information. It tells you what a policy costs. It tells you nothing about whether that policy does what your contracts require, and that second question is the one that determines whether the coverage is worth anything when you need it.
The starting point
The coverage review
A coverage review is a working session, usually forty-five minutes to an hour. We go through your current policies including every endorsement, the insurance requirements in the contracts you sign, your loss history, and how the business actually operates. Then you get a written summary of three things: what you carry, what your contracts require, and where those two do not line up.
It costs nothing and it does not obligate you to move anything. If your current program is well built, we will tell you that, and you will have a document confirming it. That outcome is more common than you might expect, and it is not a wasted conversation for either of us.
Inputs
What we need from you
- Current policies, complete, including all endorsements. A declarations page is not enough. The endorsements are where the answers are.
- Loss runs, typically five years
- One or two representative contracts, or a customer's insurance requirement schedule
- Payroll by classification and job description
- Basic operations detail: what you do, where you do it, who you do it for, and how much work you subcontract out
That is more than a quote form asks for, deliberately. The review is only as good as the information underneath it, and the parts contractors are tempted to skip are usually the parts that produce the findings.
Process
What happens next
If the review finds nothing worth acting on, we say so and you keep what you have. If it finds something, we talk about whether that is a conversation with your current agent or a reason to market the account.
When we do go to market, we build the submission the way underwriters want to see it: clean operations narrative, classification detail, loss history with context rather than a bare loss run, and the controls you actually have in place. Submissions get declined for being incomplete far more often than for being bad risks.
A few things we do not do. We do not block markets to keep other agents out. We do not approach every carrier with a name just to generate paper. And we do not hand you a stack of quotes without a recommendation, because sorting through them is the part you were hiring out in the first place.
Timing
The right time to start is 60 to 90 days before your renewal. That is enough room to assemble a real submission, let markets respond, and make a decision with time to spare. Inside 30 days the work gets worse, not faster, and you end up choosing between fewer options.
Fit
Who we work best with
Specialty trade contractors in all 50 states, at our best with firms doing between $500,000 and $20 million in annual revenue and generally five to one hundred fifty employees. That is the range where the business has outgrown the program it started with, where contract requirements have become real, and where the gap between an adequate program and a well-built one is worth actual money.
Fit
Who we are probably not right for
We would rather tell you this up front than waste your time.
If you need a certificate today. Your current agent is the faster path. What we do takes a few weeks and pays off at your renewal, not this afternoon.
If price is the only variable. A comparison site will be quicker, and we will probably lose. We are usually competitive, but that is a byproduct of building the program correctly rather than the goal we start with.
If you are under $500,000 in revenue and just getting started. We are glad to talk, and we may still be able to help. But there are simpler and less expensive options that will serve a business that size well, and we will point you toward them rather than pretend otherwise.
If your renewal is next week. We can talk, but we will do a worse job than we would with a quarter's notice, and you should know that going in.
If you are looking for someone to confirm a decision you have already made. This is not that. A review means looking at the whole program, and sometimes the finding is that you are underinsured rather than overpaying.
After the placement
What working with us looks like after the placement
Placing the coverage is the beginning of the relationship rather than the end of it. In practice that means four things.
Certificates, endorsements, and billing questions go to a dedicated account management team and get answered quickly. They do not sit in a producer's inbox.
Renewal strategy starts a quarter out, not at thirty days, so the work happens before the deadline rather than against it.
When a new customer sends you an insurance requirement schedule, send it to us before you sign it. Reading those is faster than fixing them.
Classification and payroll get reviewed ahead of the audit, which is the only point at which reviewing them is still useful.
The team
Who you will be working with
Independent agency
About Insurance Office of America
IOA is one of the largest independent insurance agencies in the United States, with roughly 1,500 employees. Independent means we are not tied to a single carrier’s appetite or a single carrier’s pricing. For trade contractors that matters most on the placements that are genuinely difficult, where the difference between a market and no market is whether your agent has somewhere to go.
We work across the standard, specialty, and surplus lines markets, and with wholesale and specialty brokers on the classes that require them.
Let’s look at what you have
Send us your current policy, including every endorsement, and tell us what your contracts require. We will tell you where the two do not line up. It costs nothing, and it does not obligate you to move anything.
Working with specialty trade contractors in all 50 states, at our best with firms between $500,000 and $20 million in annual revenue.
The information on this page is general in nature and is not a statement of coverage or a contract. All coverage is subject to policy terms, conditions, exclusions, and carrier underwriting. Availability varies by state, class of business, and individual risk.