When just a few inches of water can cost your client tens of thousands of dollars in damage, flood insurance helps pave the way to recovery. But selling flood insurance requires that you speak a special language.
Should you have the flood talk with your client?
Build your business. Insurance is about trust. Your clients trust you to know what they need in homeowners, life, auto, umbrella, liability, or other lines of coverage. By offering flood insurance as part of your portfolio, you can make your clients aware of a key vulnerability in their coverage that will more fully protect them, further building trust and increasing potential for additional sales. Offering flood insurance creates opportunities to cross-sell other lines. When clients know they can rely on you for all of their insurance needs, why would they go anywhere else?
Protect your business from lawsuits. The top two Errors and Omissions (E&O) pitfalls are not offering coverage and not offering the right amount of coverage. By being a flood agent and offering flood insurance, you can protect yourself and your agency from possible E&O-related lawsuits.
Protect your customers. Remind your clients that:
- Floods are the Nation’s number one natural disaster.
- Anywhere it rains, it can flood. Even though a property may be mapped as moderate- to low-risk, anyone can be financially vulnerable to floods. In fact, people outside of mapped high-risk flood areas file more than 20% of all National Flood Insurance Program flood insurance claims and receive one-third of Federal Disaster Assistance for flooding.
- In high-risk areas, flood insurance is mandatory for most mortgage-holders. 1
Get the Support—and Leads—to Build Your Flood Business
Why sell flood? Meet Max Flood, a registered flood insurance agent, growing his business and protecting his customers.
Flood insurance has a special language and requires specific sales knowledge. Agents.FloodSmart.gov has tools to show you how to “speak flood.” Use this site to access consumer messaging, such as testimonials, flood risk scenarios, and an interactive tool that can help you demonstrate the cost of flooding. You can embed these tools on your agency’s website or use them when talking with customers to illustrate the potential impacts of a flood, while simultaneously showing how flood savvy you really are. And when you register with the FloodSmart Agent Program, you get access to free, qualified leads.
Property owners learn about their flood risk through FloodSmart’s direct mailings, TV, newspaper, online ads, consistent media, and partner relations. Viewers and listeners are directed to FloodSmart.gov, where they can learn more about flood insurance, or to the NFIP Referral Call Center, which connects them with an agent who has signed up through the Referral Program.
1 This requirement applies to all federally regulated and insured lenders as well as government-sponsored enterprises such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.