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Insurance, explained clearly by a family with three generations of expertise.
Aaron (00:00)
Hello everybody and welcome to the speaking of insurance podcast. My name is Aaron Bollinger.
Brian Bollinger (00:04)
And I'm Brian Bollinger.
Aaron (00:06)
Today we're gonna be talking about something that we've talked about numerous times before, right, Dad? Property insurance in California. It's a frequent subject because there's a lot of news surrounding it. New bills, new legislation getting passed. I mean, you you see it it in all of your insurance news that you look at so often, right, Dad?
Brian Bollinger (00:23)
All the time is the problem, right? What ends up happening is you can't turn on the TV without hearing about either a wildfire, a flood, an earthquake fear. what is it? It's El Nino this year, correct?
Aaron (00:34)
Yep, El Nino, it's something that you know we've posted about, we've talked about. But honestly, I mean, the truth is that these events aren't just gonna stop, right? I mean, insurance companies are gonna keep having to pay out claims, hopefully. And obviously the new legislation with SB 876 that Governor Newsom just signed will hopefully increase California insurance department's oversight of insurance company and their claims handling processes and procedures. But
Aaron (01:02)
Obviously that's that's a really nuanced sort of thing and it's hard to really identify exactly what that would mean in the future, but what we can talk about is present. We can talk about currently what we're seeing in the property insurance market, what's really hard to place, what new home buyers should look for, because obviously we can talk about this as a new subject every couple of weeks because it just keeps changing and evolving.
Brian Bollinger (01:24)
Yeah, it's a moving target, right? I mean, there's like it feels like we were getting a lot softer, right? A lot of the country is easier to place business with the insurance companies. California is really on kind of a roller coaster still, right? We get periods where new companies will enter in. They'll say they want to do anything that's like within under, you know, thirty to fifty years of age. they saying they wanna like
Brian Bollinger (01:47)
essentially right business, even close to brush or adjacent to brush, but not actually in brush. Number of property markets are giving us those indications. The challenge is when we actually go and try to, you know, place business with them, there's usually some kind of wrinkle with properties. And you know, a lot of times first-time buyers or even current homeowners, they they don't know it until they jump into the property market.
Aaron (02:11)
Honestly. And as a broker, it feels like some of the time you don't even know. Because I mean, one day an insurance company will say, Hey, we want to write a bunch of new business in these zip codes. And you know, next day you try and write a policy with them. They say they're either over capacity there or they're not actually writing new business. And it gets really tricky to navigate that because obviously you get these mixed signals from these different companies and you're really trying to find, you know, this is the one or two that we usually go to for these type of things, but that constantly changes.
Aaron (02:37)
It's a little bit easier if you're a captive insurance company because you kind of know, you know, we're getting the the news from the the oversight from the people above us saying, you know, we're trying to target these specific areas. And it's a little bit more consistent with them and and more reliable the level of information that they they're able to get. But as an independent broker, you represent hundreds of insurance companies, it starts to kind of mess with the level of understanding for the insurance market. And I I want to talk about currently where we're at.
Aaron (03:06)
because I mean, obviously we're getting a lot of people coming in trying to get help with their insurance. What are some things that you've seen on the property insurance side really recently? Things that people are looking for, questions that people are asking and insurance companies and what what they're able to do.
Brian Bollinger (03:23)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest news facts right now, and it's we're still trying to absorb it, are these large rate increases with the California Fair Plan. A lot of high-risk properties or homes without updates, obviously brush and fire exposure, are getting placed with the California Fair Plan. And those renewal prices have gone up in some cases 30% or more starting October 1st. So those new rate filings are just beginning to hit. We're just beginning to see people say, hey, is there something besides the fair plan?
Brian Bollinger (03:53)
And again, if you have the fair plan, you tend to have a difference in conditions policy called the DIC policy. And that adds to your cost. It adds to your monthly expense, your annual premium costs. And it's getting to a point where people are feeling like there's gotta be a company out there that can insure us. And in some cases, like on a regular homeowners policy, and in some cases we're saying yes, right? we are at a point now where there's beginning to be a little bit of opportunity to do that.
Brian Bollinger (04:20)
Still pretty selective, right? Some of the companies want to have the auto and the home, some want to have auto home umbrella or jewelry schedule. Different companies want have different risk profiles. but in general, we are seeing more opportunity out there. It's just trying to actually place the business. And and what I think I alluded to earlier was it gets into like how old your roof is. Like we just had somebody contact us today.
Brian Bollinger (04:45)
They they had 1989 builds. So, you know, it's not that's under 50 years, you know, it's not a bad looking risk. A little close to some green belt brush potential. you know, might be able to figure that out. the issue with them right now is their roof. They haven't updated their roof. It's, you know, 40, 50 years old, end of life, right? They're looking for a solution or provider that'll be like, hey, we'll take an old roof with possibly a little bit of brush. so the way I kind of think about this is it's like a recipe, right?
Brian Bollinger (05:14)
when we talk about risk, we talk about your home, we talk about property in general, you know, there's things like the year built, you know, what kind of updates you've had to your property, can you prove it, right? Can you prove the plumbing was upgraded? Can you prove the electrical was upgraded? Can you prove the roof was, you know, replaced? These little like facts really do make a meaningful difference in what a company and how we can kind of approach companies when it comes to your particular property.
Aaron (05:40)
Obviously different company different companies look for a bunch of different things, a bunch of different factors. But yeah, like you say, hit the nail on the head right there. It's usually the the year's update that they're looking for and some sort of documentation some of the time, depending on what they're able to pull from the public permits about that property's updates. Honestly, I mean, I think I think that we're obviously seeing a lot more than some other brokers when it comes to the evolving nature of the property market, just because of how many people are coming to us looking for solutions.
Aaron (06:13)
It gets difficult though. I mean, you can't reach out three days before renewal. You can't reach out two days before renewal. If you're with a fair plan, I mean you understand how tedious their underwriting process was. And they're just covering the property for the fire risk, pretty much. And vandalism may be something else small and minor. Like you say, you have to add another policy for the rest of it, but you have to understand that an insurance company is not gonna wanna come in with two, three days notice.
Aaron (06:39)
Go get all of the forms, collect it, turn around in 24 to 48 hours, give you a price that you like and green light it. It it probably won't work that way. I mean, they're gonna have to go do their own due diligence on the property. They're gonna have to go to their own underwriting and check their own, you know, sort of approving measures that they use and make sure that your property aligns with them. And if you're reaching out to an independent broker, there might be 10 to 20 insurance companies that will take a look at it.
Aaron (07:08)
And I I can guarantee you that ninety to ninety-five percent of them are not gonna wanna have that two, three day turnaround time. A lot of them require a lot more review, especially as you get into the higher value homes. So it gets tricky, reach out before your renewal, not at your renewal. I mean, you'd mentioned it, auto insurance bundles. I mean, a lot of people don't think about these things in terms of like like a holistic approach.
Aaron (07:33)
They they kind of separate off their home insurance because it renews on one day, and then they separate off their auto insurance because it renews on another day. Imagine how simple it would be if it was all just one day. And so I I want to kind of get into the the nuance of minimum earned premium. There's a a concept where you're able to effectively like three months into your policy, you're able to cancel your current insurance and replace it with another one and get.
Aaron (08:02)
Pretty much the full refund of the other 75% minus taxes and fees, and you're able to replace that business. So you're not fully out of luck if your renewal just came up a few months ago. You are out of out of luck if you renewed last week. again, it's like I would say the easiest access to information is through AI. And so you asking AI for an opinion on what to do, who to contact.
Aaron (08:30)
They might tell you, listen, you know, you're three days before your renewal, you might want to go to this broker and get this quick turnaround time, but that might not be realistic. So just like leveraging your expectations and the education that you get. But I could you talk a little bit more about the options that people have midterm, like I mean, not midterm for the elections, but midterm for their insurance, moving their insurance, their property, their commercial property or personal property during their insurance year.
Brian Bollinger (08:58)
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing to think about is you're not really truly locked in. You know, if you do have a change of length circumstances. you know, you know, sometimes people that develop a trust or put their property in LC or do something else, maybe they do move, maybe they have some other changes, get married, divorced, whatever. you know, there are reasons to to rewrite your policy midterm. Now, if you have a grandfathered plan, if you've got something that's, you know, really fairly inexpensive, it feels expensive, one thing we do.
Brian Bollinger (09:28)
want to really highlight and stress here is you don't just stop paying your policy and let it cancel. You don't just cancel your policy because you think somebody's going to get you a quote. You really have to go through the underwriting process, give it time, you know, try to find a solution that works best for you. And then if you find that right, then you're able to to make that change, make that transition, and move over to the new solution.
Brian Bollinger (09:52)
But I think the the key point here is having one day is how it used to be. People used to have everything on the same day, you know, their auto, their home, everything. What ends up happening right? People move, people relocate. You know, auto insurance can change, you know, maybe emailing address, but your your homeowner's policy, if you move, gets a new date. again, we're really the industry is accustomed to these kinds of changes. In a business setting, business insurance, they tend to not look at that too too favorably. They prefer you to be on an annualized policy and stay with it.
Brian Bollinger (10:23)
On the personal side, it's not quite as imperative. the flip side is once you have a solution though, it is good, especially if you have your home and your auto bundled, to kind of stick with it for a year or two. the market will continue to evolve. Unfortunately, we don't know if it's gonna get easier or harder, you know, six months, a year, two years from now.
Brian Bollinger (10:42)
I'd say my perspective, my hope is that we've seen the worst of it. However, we still have very restrictive underwriting and very limited capacity for certain zip codes for certain homes near Brush. And unfortunately, the fair plan is still possibly the insurer of last resort for those homes. and also people do do updates on their homes, right? You got an old roof and you we can't get you anything because you got a 1989 roof. You know, El Nino's coming, right? Your roof isn't getting any newer.
Brian Bollinger (11:11)
Now's the time to invest in that and and get that that repaired, you know, before the the before the rings happen, before you have to possibly file a roof claim or a leak claim or something like that. And then the insurance company will go back and they'll look at the application you signed, right? If you said that roof was replaced in 2010 and it really wasn't, right? It was really 1989, the potential for them to decline that claim is pretty high. and I do think that the insurers are getting smarter to that.
Brian Bollinger (11:38)
Right. They're sending out inspectors and looking at your home. They're they're physically making sure that the facts that you're telling them, or at least the the items you're them, are true facts, not just, you know, guesses or or worse, you know, outright, you know, in inaccuracies.
Aaron (11:53)
Yeah, make sure you're not putting inaccuracies on your applications, guys. I mean, property insurance does not play. I mean, they will just straight up deny your claim. That's that's the truth 99% of the time. So make sure that you're giving accurate information to your broker, to your insurance company, whoever it is that you're going through. you talked about, and I mean I I know a lot of people call it because it's supposed to be fair plan insure of last resort, right? I mean, that's that's the phrase that gets thrown around.
Aaron (12:21)
For homes in Lake Arrowhead, for homes in Big Bear, for homes in the mountains. The fair plan is the insurer of almost first resort for a lot of insurance brokers. Now, does that mean that it should be the insurance company that you're with? Not necessarily. It depends on the risk. It depends on the excess insurance companies, the other insurance companies that might be able to write that risk in that area, that high brush area. But for a lot of brokers, they'll just say fair plan or bust. And that isn't a good solution.
Aaron (12:48)
And if you get thrown that option as a new home buyer, as somebody who has a property that got non-renewed by a grandfathered AAA or something because of the wildfire risk that it poses in Altadena, wherever it is, make sure that you get a list of the companies that were approached or the wholesaler that they went to. It I mean, that clarity can be the difference between you knowing that your broker is a, you know, stand-up person and actually doing their job properly, and somebody who just says,
Aaron (13:18)
You know what, this is a hard to place home. I'm gonna put it with honestly, one of the worst coverage packages possible. I mean, because it it gets into a bunch of other nuances. If they're doing that, then that means that they might not be writing the DIC policy difference in conditions. Or if they do, then the coverage A might not be coordinated and all the other coverage is not coordinated. It really and they might not be writing it on replacement costs. I mean, there's just a bunch of different nuances that that come with the fair plan and the risk of that that could be
Aaron (13:48)
Potentially some of the time, I would say twenty five to fifty percent of the time avoided with shopping.
Brian Bollinger (13:53)
And worse than that,
Brian Bollinger (13:54)
honestly, remember, we've had some claims with the with the Fair Plan too, right? one of the things is they're very aggressive on saying, hey, this is how much we're gonna pay you, take it or leave it. Whereas other companies might give you a little more flexibility. I don't know how Newsom's new laws and rules and things that he's putting in place, how that's gonna make that change. again, I think there's an election coming up for the California Insurance Commissioner, and you know, each department of insurance has a different perspective on how to manage that. the flip side.
Brian Bollinger (14:23)
Is the insurer of last resort, the California Fair Plan, is a lot larger than it used to be, right? I mean, it's it's it was designed to really just take a sliver of the insurance market, and now it's it's not a sliver, right? It's it's a big, you know, you do the pie, you can see it on there. It's it's
Aaron (14:39)
Yeah.
Brian Bollinger (14:39)
significantly larger than they want it to be. And that's one reason why our current Department of Insurance Commissioner.
Brian Bollinger (14:45)
Why he's allowed insurance companies to increase their rates with the agreement that they'll try to pull back some of that California Fair Plan business into their more preferred market, which which is great, I think, for consumers. I they're gonna have better claims handling if you can qualify. I think you're gonna get, you know, better rates overall. It's gonna be simpler insurance.
Brian Bollinger (15:05)
Especially if you can bundle with your auto. And you know, again, the biggest thing I think I want to stress to people is zero claims. You gotta have zero claims. You really have to have this aggressive risk control, loss mitigation approach to your life, right? That means defensive driving, it means you know being super safe when you're backing up, it means anything you can do to avoid having claims, you gotta do. If the rock flies up and you know, dings your car or you you scratch something, you bangs your
Brian Bollinger (15:35)
door on your car when you're parked at a parking lot you know you do have to contemplate hey is this worth actually turning in as a claim and we've had situations where people are like nobody told me that that $1500 bumper scratch when I backed up into that pole was going to cost me three grand a year extra in auto insurance.
Brian Bollinger (15:53)
Right? These are real numbers. These are real people stories. And it's important that you understand that frequency and severity go into your rates. and you want to drive that down to zero for your home. There's automatic late detecting systems. if you've got a seasonal house, especially in the mountains, turning off your water, your main, really good idea.
Brian Bollinger (16:14)
possibly draining your system so the pipes don't rupture from the frozen you know freezing temperatures. A lot of our clients, including ourselves at our cabin, we run our heater, you know, we run it at like forty five, forty degrees, something like that. And it costs, you know, a hundred bucks, two hundred bucks a year. But again, you talk about cheap insurance, it's really cheap insurance for us not having a claim or having to call it a plumber, we probably end up saving money.
Aaron (16:40)
I mean one hundred percent. You you talked about obviously a lot of things there. I think one of the things that I I wanna highlight is, you know, the the change in legislation and the attempted efforts at solving the California property insurance market. it's easy to go onto a podcast and talk about, you know, what we're seeing and the problems and, you know, draw up these, you know, different, you know, critiques.
Aaron (17:05)
What do you think could be a viable solution or something that could, you know, in the next few or hopefully next decade, start to alleviate the problems that we're starting to see build up with things like the fair plan, with things like claims handling, with things like excess insurance companies and their almost limitations some of the time. What what could you see as a solution to that problem?
Brian Bollinger (17:32)
There's a saying that the cure to high prices is high prices. It sounds horrible, but basically as the prices overshoot, I think, the level of risk in these companies start making money. I do believe personally and professionally that there will be more people entering the market trying to price that risk lower so they can make you know a portion of that money.
Brian Bollinger (17:52)
We're starting to see that in some high-end home markets, right? A lot of people have Chubb, great claims handling, great rates. if you're on the periphery of Brush, a lot of times they're they're maybe one of our preferred you know partners. there are some other ENS programs out there. what I think I'm trying to say is, like using that as an example, if you're not near Brush, but you're you're with Chubb, there might be some markets opening up that that might be a great value for you, can save you some money. Now, the challenge like for companies.
Brian Bollinger (18:22)
Like Chubb, if that were to happen, if they were to lose some of their lower risk clients, right? Just as a thought exercise here, that means they're left with their higher risk clients. And so those rates may not actually come down. Whereas if you have the so I'm gonna try to think about how to say this. If you if you lose your low-risk accounts, you're making a ton of money on, and you're
Brian Bollinger (18:45)
higher risk accounts, you're still having those same claims, those rates could actually continue to go up for people in those those high-risk zones. So I think what I'm trying to say is I think I've I see the lower risk property market rates going down over time. I still think it's gonna be a lot of upward pressure on people in brush. I just don't see a way around you know a house burns down
Brian Bollinger (19:09)
used to cost excuse me hundred grand to rebuild, now it's a million dollars to rebuild, for example. You know, those rates have to go up, at least 10x, just because of that replacement cost. And then on top of it, the the frequency and severity of claims has gone up. So you're seeing a a double triple whammy on that. And I guess my my hope as a state, right, we were recently in Lahaina in in in you know Maui.
Brian Bollinger (19:32)
And it was devastating to see the level of of fire destruction. I know you and I have driven through there. We've driven through the Palisades and seen, you know, that area. We didn't go through the the Northern Paradise, California area, you know, but we did have you know friends and family members that were impacted by that. it's it's very hard, I think, for these
Brian Bollinger (19:52)
Areas to get re-invigorated too. I think one of the missing things about that cost structure that people aren't really thinking about is after a big devastating fire like that, the cost to rebuild is a lot of times way higher than what people think. So that extended replacement cost that you have on your policy is important. But being underinsured to begin with and relying on that
Brian Bollinger (20:16)
you know, extended replacement cost to kind of make up the difference may not be enough. I think a lot of people are s will struggle financially post claim getting their lives back in order as they try to rebuild. I think it's a regulatory issue. I think it's a cost of the construction issue. I don't think we have really good systems in place yet as a society and how to how to navigate that.
Brian Bollinger (20:39)
you recall, Aaron, we were in near Lahaina and there were some like modular homes. Look like, you know, not really like mobile homes in the old school where they just tow them, but these were like look like really well-made structures ready to be set into place into the into the f facility. I know some of my commercial contractors have been playing with that on a more like a restaurant building idea where in the factory they can build it all, bring out and truck out the six or eight modules, kind of bolt them together.
Brian Bollinger (21:09)
for lack of a better term, you know, put the finishing touches on it, build a world class structure in maybe ninety days or less. Whereas, you know, cause it requires a lot less inspections and permits because you've already got it self certified that the framing's done right, the wiring's done right, like everything has already been like pre inspected, and the plans are all pre approved. I think we're seeing a a push regulatory wise to make it easier to rebuild people's homes. I just don't think that that like
Brian Bollinger (21:38)
know Maui was ready for that. I don't think the Palisades are ready for that. I don't think California was ready to to like, you know, kind of reinvigorate themselves. So I think one of my hopes for the next decade is that local governments create not only a disaster plan, which is getting more water to these places when in there in need, having more fire resources to help prevent them, being aggressive on the the brush clearances and really trying to, you know, at least apply Cal fire standards to, you know, brush clearances and protection zones and those kinds of things. But
Brian Bollinger (22:08)
But even like extending it more into that post-recovery or post-loss recovery phase of things, having a proactive plan that's not like people pointing fingers after a bad event happens, but really having concrete structures and playbooks in place to help that that community bounce back faster. I I just think that's that's necessary.
Aaron (22:30)
I think I think that that could definitely be something that's beneficial. I would say on the insurance side of things and the financial side of things, a higher base rate for newer homes because we see those getting drastically underpriced could be good. And then requiring a quota or a max quota for different market shares for different insurance companies and specific zip codes based off of associated risk could be something that that we could see in the near future. again, it would just be like a statistical model that would look at the fire risk of specific areas, the current market share of each insurance company.
Aaron (22:58)
kind of limit and restrict the ones that are that are growing too excessively in terms of the lower risk ones and force them up on the higher risk ones as well to to actually earn their market share. Because I mean you see these insurance companies that are choosing to not write insurance in California at all. I mean you see like companies like State Farm who've just moved out of the state entirely. You see companies like Progressive who don't really like writing that homeowners insurance in California. It could be a countrywide effort to make insurance companies write so like and not be so selective.
Aaron (23:27)
based off of like associations with zip codes, with risk, with you know, f brush mapping and just like an intelligence model that forces them to hit quotas to write insurance in the United States of America in the first place. Because again, I mean, it's a profitable business, sure insurance companies haven't made much money in California, but let's look at other states. I mean, there wouldn't be insurance companies writing insurance in the United States if they weren't making profit, if there wasn't profit in the business itself. And so again.
Brian Bollinger (23:55)
Well
Brian Bollinger (23:55)
and just to put that in perspective, two people don't really understand this, right? So in California, it's like its own little world for for insurance, right? Arizona's its own little world. Nevada's its own little world, right? Each of these states have their own department of insurance, right? This is where you get that Republic of the United States idea. So I think what you're trying to say is these larger national carriers hopefully would want to
Brian Bollinger (24:18)
you know, have access to the California marketplace and if they want to have access to the California marketplace, it'd be like this is a requirement to get there. I think the challenge with it is a and maybe it's a fee, but the problem with all these ideas, i honestly
Brian Bollinger (24:31)
Is that somebody has to pay for the claims. And I think it gets back to that thing that you know I've always said, which is the insurance companies don't pay claims. My clients pay claims, right? They pay the premiums that basically fund the claims. And so we only really have the only solution I see is to try to find a way to reduce the frequency and severity of claims, truly to drive down those insurance costs. The challenge is if your house is in a high, very high hazard zone, whether that's for flood,
Brian Bollinger (25:01)
Or earthquake or fire, or for all three, God forbid. I think that it's tough. And we have a cabin, right? We have a cabin with State Farm. It's it's in an earthquake zone, it's in a not flood zone, I don't think, but definitely an earthquake zone and and a fire zone. And it's it's pretty extreme. Now, Cal Fire and the Department of Forestry, you know, they they do a lot of like brush risk mitigation in the area. They've got Kern County has you know resources in the area, county fire departments, state fire departments, Calfire.
Brian Bollinger (25:32)
It's like it's this partnerships that are happening, I think, on the fire suppression and fire prevention side of things that I think probably give us the highest ROI as a society.
Aaron (25:42)
Yeah.
Brian Bollinger (25:43)
And I think that that's the other key is not cutting back on those kinds of services or letting it slide that, that brush clearance is not good enough, but we're gonna let you keep it, right? I mean, I've seen some of these 200-year-old 100-year-old oak trees that have literally enough accumulated branches and debris in there because there hasn't
Brian Bollinger (26:01)
Been natural fire clearance for decades. That brush is built up. Now, if there's a fire there, all that stuff that shouldn't have built up over the you know, it was a natural fire cycle that would have cleared out that underbrush understory a little better. Now we have a situation where if a fire comes in, an emberal lands on that not only we lose that couple hundred-year-old oak tree, which is terrible, but we also you know extend the heat of the fire, makes it more intense. it's it's a very complicated problem.
Aaron (26:31)
It is. Yeah. And obviously there's no simple solution. And I mean, you you can say anything. I mean, you can say that the insurance company's losing money. You can say that our clients are losing money. You can say that honestly, some of the time we are losing money in terms of like the effort to go through all of the processes for these insurance companies and to find the client the best option because there's no real system right in place for for independent brokers or for brokers in general to understand like
Aaron (26:57)
all of the nuances of the market and there's no guide. I mean, it's kind of just like, you know, go off of experience, what you know, but that obviously continues to change. And so it's a really spontaneous business. It's really spontaneous risk pool that we're operating in in California, especially. yeah, obviously there's a bunch of different things that are trying to make positive change. I mean, a lot of different acts and bills that are, you know, being proposed or suggested and regulations, but I mean
Aaron (27:24)
when it comes down to it, let's let's see in the the wholeness of time how how that will you know unfold. how was pickable yesterday
Brian Bollinger (27:32)
Pickleball's great, you know, won a few, lost a few, you know, so it was good. I know that I had some great shots yesterday, and then I would, you know, flub some easy ones. But you know, spiking that ball, it just seems so easy to get that drive that down at your feet and your ankles there, son. I know I missed a few of those and definitely went out of the court.
Aaron (27:53)
Well, if you've ever played a sport with your father and it's somewhat competitive sport and you and your father have as close and loving and open relationship as my father and I, then you'll understand how two bulls, bullingers, go go at it, you know, some of the time I I bet I bet you all understand who are listening. it it it's tough, you know, playing, working, doing things with family, but I mean, I would say the biggest thing is trust and
Aaron (28:22)
I I I mean I don't trust your backhand, Dad. That's the only thing I don't trust. That that little slice thing that you try and do with your left hand.
Brian Bollinger (28:29)
Well, whatever. And then I switch hands too sometimes, which probably, you know, annoys people too. But every so often it works out really, really well. I had some great low drives. I mean again, it's it's a game, right? We do our best, we try to get better every day. I think again, I think what we've been doing for our clients and and our prospects and people that want to work
Brian Bollinger (28:46)
us is you know we're always looking for more insurance companies to partner with trying to see if we can get some market capacity that's not being tapped or utilized in your area to see if we can get you a better value from your insurance dollar. That's that's what we do. Some of the our competitors only go to like one or two companies. I think we're up to 20 or 30 now. It's almost too many. But but again we are trying to navigate that in a way that we can help our clients and help people.
Aaron (29:16)
100%. Obviously, it's not just limited, right? Who we're trying to work with. It's it's not just the insurance companies that we're trying to work with. We're trying to work with people who are also helping these people with the properties, property advisors, the investors themselves with these bigger portfolios, the real estate agents working on the deals, the mortgage lenders. I mean, reach out to us. We we've had a lot of people reach out to us. we have the market access, we have the care, we've got obviously the expertise on the team.
Aaron (29:44)
Always looking to help more people. And so, I mean, if you yourself have a property and you want to reach out to us, you know, drop drop it in the comments. I mean, you know, follow, like, you know, subscribe and do all do all that stuff on our podcast that helps us grow, helps us, you know, advise more people and hopefully educate some more people on insurance. Cause I mean it's it's obviously comes secondary to everything else in your life. but obviously the second that you do have to file a claim, it's really important that you do have the level of knowledge and expertise before.
Aaron (30:15)
the renewal before the claim as opposed to after. And hopefully if you're buying a property, this was helpful. Hopefully if you're advising people who buy properties, this was helpful. And yeah, we're gonna keep keeping y'all informed on a California insurance market, you know, different things going on with us, with our business. some advice, some, you know, little tips, some ways to save money. And that's the point of this podcast is you know just keep keep educating and zero cost to consumer information as they say.
Brian Bollinger (30:43)
Sounds good. Well, you have a great day. Thank you much for your time, son.
Aaron (30:47)
Thank you very much for your time, Brian.
Aaron (30:51)
Take care.