Message to Young Agents: Open a Dialogue With Your Legislators

I also was able to contrast our meetings with Oklahoma representatives against stories from other states’ agents and their respective representatives. Again, we’ve got it made.

What independent agent would argue that a person’s freedom to start a business and run it how they see fit, within the law, is not the backbone of our country? Given that 80% of commercial insurance is written by independent agents, you could say that our business is the business of keeping other businesses in business!

So naturally, we expressed to our Oklahoma legislators that the smallbusiness owners in our great state deserve to be given fair treatment in tax law and cybersecurity and liability laws. They all seemed to agree. Similarly, we expressed the importance of keeping independent agents involved in crop insurance and flood insurance programs. Certainly, there are many differences in opinions among us with regard to politics. But what I heard in D.C. was that the values that most in our industry share are strong within our Oklahoma legislators as well. This is not the case for every state. We heard stories from our counterparts in other states about their representatives not being willing to take a meeting with them. To me, that is shameful.

While we saw over and over again how busy these people are all day, nearly every one of the seven Oklahoma congressmen and senators we met with made a point to at least say hello and talk for a minute. Beyond that, their very capable aides, assistants and chiefs of staff listened intently and discussed the issues with us.

With this experience, I would urge my fellow young agent peers to open a dialogue with their local and state representatives. Do a bit of preparation if you feel it is necessary. The Big I has many helpful resources to help with expressing the importance of our industry in the local and global economy. At the very least, find out about our Political Action Committees that do this work for us every day.

For the skeptical young agent reader: the assumption that nothing meaningful could come from a conversation with a politician is unfair. You may be surprised, like I was in D.C.

For the experienced agent who has spoken with legislators many times, show a young person the ropes. Don’t merely explain to them, like I have tried to do here. Help us discover who to call, what to say, and most importantly, why to continue this work.

Yes, we have it made. But the work is never finished. There will always be a constant flow of new ideas, proposals and bills that advertently or inadvertently undermine the work that the independent agent does for the good of society. Let us be sure to continue this tradition in our industry’s younger population.