When you incorporate, the business can actually protect your personal assets. What this means is that the business will be liable and responsible for all debts incurred. As an insurance agent, you can be hit with large commission chargebacks, sued by clients (make sure you carry E&O), and incur large income tax bills at the end of the year. The business would be at risk and could protect you, as the owner, from having to dip into your own funds.

Most agents tend to dread tax season. This is mainly because commissions are not taxed when paid out so you will have to pay those come tax time. Typically incorporating can offer some tax benefits to help reduce federal and state income tax. Not to mention, there are many items that you can use as tax deductions like mileage to and from appointments, licensing fees, and many more.

Incorporating helps create a succession plan with your carriers. It is important, in terms of protecting your business, to have a plan in case of an emergency or even death of the owner. Should you not have an LLC, in some cases, your commissions could potentially all go back to the company. Where does this leave your family or employees if there’s no one that can take over. As an individual, we have seen agents die and their families unable to get the commission income transferred over. This would not happen if you are incorporated.

Pinnacle Financial Services is here to help you through this process. We are a full Service “FMO” that has many tools available to help you and your new endeavors. For starters, we have a national trainer (myself) that can help walk you through how to incorporate should you decide to go that route. We offer top-notch technology to our contracted agents at no cost, like our proprietary Connect4Medicare online enrollment technology. I can say this with confidence in that we offer the best agent support in the business and genuinely care about every agent that writes with us.

As an independent agent, typically all aspects of the business rest solely on your shoulders. It is important to be able to deliver the type of service that a large brokerage can handle but on a much smaller scale. So, what does a back-office look like? A back office is defined as the portion of a company made up of administration and support personnel who are not client-facing. As an insurance agent, you typically need to handle issues like licensing, client inquiries, enrollment status, and many more. At Pinnacle Financial Services, we offer all our agents’ access to our back office at no cost!

Here are the following divisions that you have access to just for partnering with Pinnacle Financial Services:

• Technology: You can’t have a back office these days without having technology. When you partner with Pinnacle Financial Services, we give you every piece of technology you could have at your fingertips. Just to name a few, you have access to a proprietary online enrollment platform for Medicare known as Connect4Medicare, a CRM system for keeping track of leads known as AgencyBloc, a data aggregator that keeps track of all of your business called AgentVizion, and quoting software for every line of senior insurance you can think of.
• Health and Life Support Staff: We have 8 people dedicated to helping you with all aspects of your business. Our health and life support staff have exclusive access to next level support for every carrier. Have you ever had to wait on hold for an hour to finally get someone who can’t answer your questions? Not only will our support staff take those calls off your hands, but we will always get you that answer you need with 24 hours.
• Enrollments: Although many of us are enrolling clients via electronic applications, we have an entire staff dedicated to scrubbing and processing applications for you. They ensure that applications are never sent to the carrier with missing information, missing pages or documents and that you are licensed and appointed in the area where the application is being submitted.
• Compliance: At Pinnacle Financial Services, we feel that staying compliant requires a full-time job. We have that handled for you as well. We have a compliance team that can help you through all the difficult rules and regulations that CMS has governed on your Medicare business. We can help create your agency compliance charter at no cost as well!
• Graphic Design: Ever thought about creating a logo? Or how about a mail-piece that is specific to the market you are trying to capture? We have a graphic designer at the office who can help you with all of that and more!

By utilizing our back-office support, you can operate as an independent agent, but on the scope of large scale operation. We don’t want to be a typical “FMO”, but a partner in your success. If you are sitting here wondering how you can continue to write business during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, then you need to pick up your phone and call Pinnacle Financial Services.