America’s Young Insurance Agents: Love and Optimism in the Workplace

“I wanted a job I could love,” says 29-year-old Meghan McGarry.

She found it when she first went to work in an independent insurance agency in New York. Four and one-half years later, and now handling small business accounts in an upstate New York office for one of the country’s largest independent agencies, Marshall & Sterling Inc., McGarry is totally upbeat about her career choice.

“I’m very optimistic. For myself, the sky’s the limit. It really is what you make it,” says McGarry.

Patrick Watkins has been around the agency business longer than McGarry — 14 years in all — but still qualifies as a young agent and still sounds like he can’t believe his own good fortune in being an agency owner at the age of 37.

“I love it. I love every minute of it. Even when I’m talking about being overwhelmed, I say that with a smile on my face. It gets me up early, energetic and going as hard as I can every day and I just love it. It’s wonderful,” says Watkins, one of five principals in Watkins Insurance Group in Austin, Texas.

Wisconsin’s Bart Straka is more reserved but every bit as committed to his agency career. At age 39, Straka only has a short time left to be classified as a young agent but he’s making the most of it. He was recently named Young Agent of the Year by the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents in part for his efforts to attract young people to the business.

In the rural Wisconsin agency — Tricor Inc. headquartered in Lancaster — where he has worked for 16 years, Straka is mentoring and managing a team of about 17 commercial lines producers, some of whom are as young — 23 years old — as he was when he began in the business.

“I feel very good about it, ” he says of where he is in his agency career. “I love that our owners bring new young people in every year, people who are growing and adding to our business. That keeps it exciting.”

The enthusiasm of McGarry, Watkins and Straka is not an anomaly. America’s young independent insurance agents — 40 years old and younger — love their jobs, according to a new InsuranceJournal.com survey of young property/casualty independent agents.

Whether relative rookies like McGarry, or young veterans like Watkins and Straka, a substantial majority of today’s young agents — 81 percent — say they have found their permanent career, according to the Insurance Journal online survey completed by 360 young agents during the first 12 days of March.

Also, whether they were born into it like Watkins or ended up in it after trying another field like McGarry, a substantial 83 percent of young agents are optimistic or very optimistic about their own careers, the survey found.

Classic Entry

Watkins’ entry into the agency business was “classic” in his own terminology. “My father was in the business and I followed in his footsteps. I started as the janitor and the inspection person and worked my way up from there,” says the Austin agent.

In 1994 when he started full time in the agency, there were only four people. Today there are 90 employees generating revenues of $8 million a year. His father sold the agency in 2002. Watkins is president and the majority shareholder among five principals.

Watkins has managers who handle much of the day-to-day operations, leaving him to do what he loves. “My heart is in production so I spend a large amount of my time and effort in direct sales,” Watkins says.

Family-owned agencies like Watkins’ firm are common. In fact, 55 percent of the young agents in the Insurance Journal survey said they work for an agency that is family-owned.

McGarry has a sense of their popularity. “The only really young people I have met in the industry are people who have been born into it,” she says.

McGarry did not follow in her father’s footsteps to get where she is today. She began her career working for a health insurance provider but didn’t like it because she felt like a cog in a machine. She had a friend who worked for an agency “who talked and talked and talked about how much she loved her job.” So when an opening at the agency came up, McGarry jumped at it. She took a $12,000 pay cut to become a personal lines customer service representative.

“Within two or three months I got bit by the bug. I thought, this is just so interesting. I never understood before how insurance works. I understood how health insurance works but property/casualty is so very different. I automatically said, ‘Oh this is fantastic. I love this.'”

It didn’t take long for McGarry to decide to switch to commercial lines. “I kind of knew early on that this was the industry I was going to make my career in and I didn’t see myself doing personal lines forever,” she relates.

That decision led her to Marshall & Sterling, an all-lines, employee-owned agency ranked 28th on the Insurance Journal Top 100 list of privately-held agencies.

At the Leeds, N.Y., branch of Marshall & Sterling, McGarry wears two hats. She is a customer service representative for small business accounts and she manages a small business incubator program, which markets to start-ups. McGarry handles everything from billing problems to writing new business. “There are transaction things that I do and there’s very complicated things that I do,” she explains. “It’s hard to say what I do on any given day — which is why I like it.”

According to the IJ survey, among the things young agents like about their jobs is the money. Forty-three percent pull in between $51,000 and $100,000 a year, with a healthy 22 percent earning in excess of that.

Some 35 percent — typically recruits in their early years — earn under $50,000.

But more than the actual dollars, agents appreciate that as independent agents they have the freedom to influence, if not control, how much they make. When agents were asked what they like most about being an agent, (see 101 Things Independent Agents Like Most on page N17), the comments reflected this.

“There is no cap on what can be earned,” one agent wrote. Another cited “the possibility of making huge sums of money.”

“The freedom to make as much money as I want and make my own hours,” commented another.

“As an agent you are the owner of your own little business. You control how much money you make or don’t make in your agency,” said one more.

The working hours were cited by a number of young agents as a plus. According to the Insurance Journal survey, 57 percent of young agents work between 35 and 45 hours a week.

When she’s not working in the agency or tending to her family, McGarry has time to serve as state chair for the NeXt Gen program for young agents that is run by the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America.

Straka, who puts in time as a board member for PIA National, admits having to discipline himself not to break out his laptop every night at home to extend his workday.

Watkins suggests the hours worked might come down to personality. How many hours does he work? “It depends on whom you ask,” Watkins admits. “If you ask my wife, it’s about 100 hours a week. I probably average 60 hours a week and, of course, you have to define what work is. I’m including dinners with insurers, clients, breakfast with clients, then all the hours during the day.”

Watkins acknowledges that the industry provides a less stressful or less time-consuming environment for those who want that, even if he doesn’t take advantage of it. “Maybe I’m not the one to ask. I find it fairly consuming actually but that’s probably just my personality,” he says. “But what I have seen is that most of the people who are pretty successful in this business are pretty hard-charging, type-A folks that tend to take on a lot, which, again, I guess that’s their choice, but even within that you can certainly take vacations.”

With the additional stress, however, comes the bigger paycheck. “If you have someone that wants to make $50,000 to $100,000 a year and that’s a nice lifestyle for those folks, then I would think you would have a lot of flexibility and not a tremendous amount of stress. But obviously when you start wanting to have incomes of $200,000 or $300,000, it can definitely be very stressful,” Watkins adds.

Beyond the money and hours, what young agents report they like most about their jobs are intangibles like the freedom, the relationships they make, the meeting new people, the ability to help their customers, the knowledge they gain and the challenge of keeping up with changes. Some of the survey comments on what agents like most highlight these qualities:

“You can never say it’s boring or it’s the same old thing.”

“Learning all the time; it is a challenge.”

“My customers depend on my knowledge and trust what insurance programs I offer to them.”

“I like that it is a relationship business. You meet a lot of different people and learn about several different business operations, making many contacts and friends along the way.”

Watkins expresses similar feelings. “I like it because you have control over your own destiny,” he says.

McGarry gets right to the point when asked what she likes most: “Definitely the diversity. You never do the same thing in the same day. Every day is different and that makes it exciting.”

Straka’s favorite part remains working with clients. “It sounds like a cliche; but I’ve met some incredibly good people in this industry,” he says.

Future Outlook

Most young agents (80 percent) are not presently agency owners but more than half (54 percent) of these non-owners have aspirations to be owners some day.

For Watkins, that dream has been realized thanks to a father who planned ahead and believed in youth.

Ownership is in on young McGarry’s radar: “Yeah, I’d love to be an agency owner someday.”

For Straka, it’s not a burning desire. “There was a time when I actually pursued that a little bit. But I realized that as a young commercial producer, if you’re at the right agency … and if you go out and you do the job and write accounts, your money is completely based on your ability and how hard you work. So, with very little capital investment, you’re almost like your own business owner.”

America’s young agents are nearly equally excited about the future of the agency system of which they are a part as they are about their own jobs. The survey found that 79 percent feel optimistic or very optimistic about the future of the independent agency system.

“I think that there’s more opportunity for independent insurance agents now than I have seen certainly ever before in my career and perhaps more than there’s ever been,” says Watkins.

“The future of young agents? “Wow, where should I stop?” McGarry enthuses. “There are a lot of opportunities in this industry; so many I can’t list them all.”

Straka also has a positive outlook but is cautious because he feels that the retirement of many Baby Boomers could deplete the ranks not only of agencies but also of carriers. “It doesn’t worry me but it’s a concern,” he adds.

It’s also a concern to other young agents. Only 6 percent in the IJ survey said they were very optimistic about the industry’s ability to attract new talent.