We were lucky to catch up with Parker Reed recently and have shared our conversation below.
Parker, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Ever since I was young I have always had a strong work ethic and have never been afraid to get my hands dirty. At the age of fourteen, I teamed up with one of my good friends and ran a lawn care company that had us spending our weekends cutting upwards of 15 lawns from sunup to sundown. Around this same time, I asked my uncle, Russ Parry, if I could work for him at his captive insurance agency since I felt like I needed something productive to do during the week as well. Most of my friends spent their time after school playing video games and sports or just hanging out, but I always felt the drive to be out working on something instead. Every day, I would ride the city bus from Jr. High to Russ’ office to do simple tasks like document filing for a couple of hours, which started piquing my interest in the insurance industry. As I got older, I started helping with billing and some of the financial jobs, and once I was old enough to apply for my insurance license, I took the exam and, with Russ’ mentorship, I quickly found a lot of success. I applied and was accepted to be the youngest AIT (agent in training) with this company and was awarded “top new agent” for several months in a row until I was offered the opportunity to open my own insurance agency just like my uncle’s. While he was excited for me and supported me in my decision, he also advised me to do my research on the different insurance companies and markets before signing so that I could be sure that it was something that made sense for me. I remember him saying that, if possible, I should see if I could start an independent agency so that I could “represent the client instead of representing the carrier” as well as gain freedom over my agency instead of being stuck with one company that could change my contract at any time as that was his experience.
As I spent some time researching the different markets in the industry, I found that starting an independent insurance agency would be the best fit for me. This was a hard decision because that would mean passing up a guaranteed base salary and weathering the storm of starting a new business without income. In order to ease this strain, Russ offered to invest in my agency and supplement my income, thinking that if I was able to make it work, and it made sense for him in the future, we could partner together on the other side of things and he could gain his independence as well. With Russ’ financial support, I was able to focus wholly on building my agency, so I immediately started trying to schedule meetings with carriers to try and secure appointments with them.
I quickly found that it was extremely difficult to secure carrier appointments without an already existing book of business. The people I met with would basically laugh at me and explain that I needed to have years of experience and a book of business for them to even consider me. This made no sense to me because if no one would give me a chance, how was I supposed to get the experience and book of business they were asking for? I explored many cluster and aggregator groups and eventually partnered with a company that said they would help me get started and obtain access to the carriers. Shortly after joining, I found that this company provided little to no support, they were taking a large portion of my commission earnings, and it was still very difficult to get access to all the carriers I needed. These things along with some other frustrating parts of their contract made me feel trapped.
After a few years of feeling like I was swimming against the current with this company, I had grown enough to finally be able to buy out of my contract with them. I then went ahead and pursued my own direct appointments with the carriers since I finally had the book and experience they had asked me for at the beginning of my journey. Around this time, my uncle was no longer working in the captive insurance market, and we decided to team up and start building an agency together. Some agents from his old company noticed that he was having success in the independent market and asked if they could partner with us.
Having been on both the captive and the independent sides of insurance, we understood the clear benefits of the independent market as well as the large hurdles involved in starting your own independent agency, so we decided to create a platform that would help these agents break into the independent insurance market and have all of the fairness and supports that I felt were lacking when I signed up with my original aggregator group.
As of 2023 we now have over 100 locations nationwide with almost $100 Million in annual sales and plan to continue growing and improving our product. We currently have goals to have a considerable presence in almost every state across the nation, grow to over $1 Billion in annual sales, and continue to help agents find great success in the independent insurance market.
I feel that what sets us apart from other companies like us is the easy carrier access and training we are able to provide our agents from day one while still making it affordable for agents to start up as well as stick around once they have grown. We hope to build on this and continue to grow our team to increase this support as well as develop our carrier relationships so that we can maximize the tools, options, and benefits available to our agents.
Parker, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself and your company to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
A quick summary about myself is that I took a leap to break into the independent side of insurance and learned many things that led me to create a platform that would provide fairness, support, and transparency to agents considering taking that same leap. I find great joy and fulfillment in growing and improving Platinum, but also make sure to keep a healthy work-life balance and enjoy the beauties of life with my family. Platinum is an insurance group that focuses on helping captive and new agents enter the independent agency space. This gives them the opportunity to start and own their own agency with all of the freedom that comes with it, but also have easy access to carriers, training, support, higher negotiated commissions, technology discounts, and many other benefits. We started in 2016 and sell for over 60 property and casualty carriers as well as hundreds of life insurance carriers. We focus primarily on personal, commercial, and life insurance, but many of our agencies write other lines like health insurance, group benefits, property management, retirement, and many more. We feel that we set ourselves apart from the competition by being transparent and communicative, offering much higher commission splits, and always innovating to adapt with the market so that we can create a better product for our agents and their clients.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I think our reputation comes from having a product that stands out from the competition. Most companies take a large percentage of the commission, which gets even larger if you are writing under their carrier codes. We have one uniform split that is just a low, flat monthly fee. We also have a team dedicated to helping the agents succeed in their day-to-day operations with anything from technology, training, and carrier questions to hiring practices, websites, and logo design.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
We are just now starting to focus on marketing and getting our name out there, so up til now we have been able to find great growth solely by word of mouth. The fairness and transparency of our agreement makes it easy for carrier representatives and Platinum agents to recommend us to people they know that may be looking to get into the independent insurance market.
Contact Info:
- Website: PlatinumInsAgents.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Platinuminsagents
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/platinum-insurance-group-inc/