The Walters Agency Podcast

Debunking Social Media's ‘No Agent Needed’ Hype

• Timothy Walters • Episode 23

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0:00 | 12:15

Are The Social Media Advertisements Claiming It's A Mistake To Have An Insurance Agent Legitimate? 

Ever see a celebrity telling you not to pay your premium until you hear a secret that slashes your bill? We take you behind the curtain of those viral insurance ads and show how AI-generated endorsements, sensational claims, and data-harvesting funnels hook your curiosity and turn your personal details into a product. Instead of real savings, you often get a swarm of calls and quotes that ignore the coverage you actually need.

We walk through the mechanics: the landing pages that mirror a normal quote, the permission you unknowingly grant for mass distribution, and why your phone doesn’t stop ringing. Then we tackle the biggest myth of the moment—the idea that agents take 80 percent of your premium. We break down real-world commission ranges in property and casualty insurance, the business costs they cover, and why that viral number makes for great clicks but terrible facts.

From there, we shift to what truly matters: how to evaluate coverage without getting misled by price-only promises. We share practical ways to spot red flags, verify licensed pros, and ask smarter questions about endorsements, limits, and exclusions that decide claim outcomes. If you’ve ever wondered whether going it alone is worth the risk, you’ll hear why a trusted agent can be a force multiplier—reducing surprises, aligning coverage with your life, and guiding you through markets that keep changing.

If this conversation helped you cut through the noise, share it with a friend who’s been flooded by “cheaper in seconds” ads. Subscribe for more straight talk on protecting your home, car, and business, and leave a rating to help others find clear, honest guidance.

To learn more about The Walters Agency visit:
https://www.brightway.com/agencies/tn/knoxville/0237/team
The Walters Agency
7009 Asheville Hwy
Knoxville, TN 37924
423-417-2070

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Walters Agency Podcast, where insurance meets peace of mind. Hosted by licensed insurance agent and owner Timothy Walters, we're here to help families, homeowners, and small business owners throughout East Tennessee protect what matters most. Our mission? Creating win-win-win solutions for insurance. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02:

But do they really tell the whole story about insurance? Welcome back, everybody. Skip Monty here in the studio with licensed insurance agent and owner of the Walters Agency, Timothy Walters. Tim, how's it going, man?

SPEAKER_01:

Going well, Skip. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm doing fine, doing fine today. And really interested. I was kind of excited about this episode. You and I talked a little bit about this uh in our last recording, but um, you know, I I I'm saying uh I'm not on social media much, but but when I'm on there, I do some work on there, and what I do, I see a lot of uh reels and clips about uh uh about insurance and how you don't need an agent um and you can save money and and with some famous people in the ads. So is is you know is that legitimate? Are those ads for real? Uh um take it not.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah, it's still, I mean, we we've talked about this uh you know before we started the show, and it still gives me a giggle. Um uh so as we said, some of these famous people, um I would be shocked if their lawyers know that this is going on. You know, I'm pretty sure that most of these are just AI generated. Um I'm kind of I'm kind of watching how this how this plays out in the markets, but you know, to what you what what you talked about there, Skip, yeah, absolutely. Um I think because I'm in the business and I'm always, you know, when I'm at work, you know, I'm always researching insurance stuff and I'm I'm running quotes and I'm going da-da-da-da. So of course, you know, the matrix picks up what I'm what I'm looking at. And so my entire social media feed is basically filled with these ads um that start off like uh, you don't pay your insurance uh this month, you know, until you've listened to this message, you know, and you know you're paying too much for your insurance, and 80% of what you pay is going to your agent, which my God, I wish that was true. Oh my, I wouldn't be here, Skip. I would be on an island, I would I would not see me again. But uh uh that is actually completely false. It is a blatant lie. Uh, and these famous people whose faces, their voices and likeness are being used for these advertisements. My expectation is that it is not authorized by them uh or their representatives. So just my thought on the matter. I don't know 100%, of course. Uh I could be talking about the wrong side of myself, but uh it would really surprise me because they're talking about legal contracts online to drive uh people to click on a link to provide information, and that's what it is. It's an information harvesting scheme. Uh, you know, these companies that put these advertisements out, uh, they're wanting you to be like, you know, I I pay too much for my insurance. What does it ever get me? I never had a claim. I'm gonna click on this link and I'm gonna get less expensive insurance because these damn agents, they are, you know, getting 80% of you know what I pay. Again, I wish. Um, but click on the link uh and it takes you to, I'm sure, some kind of landing page where it asks you all the standard questions that me or my staff would ask you uh if you called in for quotes. Uh and then they sell that information to insurance agents who then follow up with you to try to get you insurance quotes. Uh and how do I know this? I have bought leads in the past. I don't do it anymore. They're a waste of money, in my opinion. Uh, because when you call people and you actually get a hold of them, they're ticked off because 30 other people have called them and they they think, well, I don't know why I'm getting all these calls. Well, you clicked on that link, you provided that information, you gave permission for them to provide that information to agents, and they sold it to us. That's what's going on with that. It's it's just it's the newest iteration of a very old uh information harvesting uh strategy.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh that's all it is. Interesting. Well, now, how can somebody like me that you know, I mean, especially with AI, which is a whole nother ball of wax to talk about, but with the way, you know, you can't tell what's real and what's not. What how can somebody tell if an advertisement is is misleading or incomplete?

SPEAKER_01:

I I would say, Skip, the the best way to do that is the old adage, right? Uh if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't. So if the if the hook is, you know, you shouldn't pay your insurance aid, you shouldn't pay your insurance policy until you listen to this ad. Then you're paying too much because your agent is getting 80% of what you pay. Click on this link for cheaper insurance, okay? You know, again, I'm gonna I'm gonna come out here and say this not 100%, but I've never seen a property and casualty insurance agency contract that gave 80% of the premium as commission to the agent. The average commission, in my experience, again, this is just me, I'm only talking from my own experience as an agent for however long I've been doing this, since 2012. Uh, is between probably 10 and 15 percent uh for most products. Now, some products might be a little bit less, some products might be a little bit more, some carriers might give you a little bit less, some carriers might be a little bit, but the average is between 10 and 15 percent of commission to the agent, from which, of course, we have to pay all of our expenses. Like we're running a business. So if we have staff, that's how we pay our staff. If we have expenses, you know, for licensing fees, for our equipment, whatever, we're paying that out uh of what our average commission is. So I again, I wish I was making 80% of the commission, or or I wish I was making 80% commission out of the premium that I wrote uh or that I've written over the last some number of years as a as an independent operator. I would not be here. Again, I would have somebody working for me. Somebody else will be talking to you right now. Okay, I I'd be doing whatever else I wanted to do. Um, but the reality is, yeah, agents do not get paid 80% of the the commission for property and casual. Just it doesn't really happen. Uh there's uh maybe maybe for life insurance. I've seen some, I've seen some you know, higher commission rates for life insurance. But again, these are these advertisements you're seeing are typically for auto insurance or maybe homeowners insurance.

SPEAKER_02:

Gotcha, gotcha. Well, obviously there's risks involved in buying insurance directly without professional guidance. Well, are there some other things that you know you're risking by doing that?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, I mean, again, you know, data harvesting operations, uh, you know, a lot of them are, you know, legitimate. I mean, legitimate as in legal. I don't know about the legality of using, you know, famous people's uh faces and voices. I don't know if he's the if he's famous people, um, and I'm being careful about naming anybody because you know, you know, I don't want that liability on me. But I mean, again, you you're gonna see like a famous person saying this stuff and they're not known for insurance. You gotta ask your you gotta ask a question, like what that what is this all about? Um and I would imagine these people have lawyers who, you know, if they saw this stuff, would understand they're talking about a legal contract that's governed by a state and also the federal government in some cases. Uh you don't want to be just throwing out incorrect information to the internet, right? Um, but of course, there's there's the way technology is nowadays. I mean, people can gank your and my your and my uh names or or or faces and and voices just you know by viewing these videos, probably use us, you know, uh however they want, which is scary to think about. But uh yeah, maybe I should become Amish. But yeah, I mean, again, just you use it use a use a little common sense. Uh again, that that old adage, I love that old adage. If it's too good to be true, it probably is not true. We all wish that there was a way for us to cut 80% of our expenses on anything. There's usually not, uh, unless you're cutting a lot of, you know, a lot of quality, a lot of a lot of stuff. So in cutting your insurance agent out, if you do have an agent, I promise you it's not gonna save you 80% on your insurance just because of that. Um it is mathematically not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and insurance is complicated, you know. So to me, without having an agent, I think you're risking, you know, making dumb mistakes, you know, without somebody kind of guiding you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, I I think uh, you know, some people who who you know been through the school of hard knocks, who who've maybe, you know, had insurance claims and or have had some kind of experience uh with it, uh could probably do okay themselves. You know, I think about myself before I got into this business, you know, my perception of what was, you know, good coverage or you know, stuff that I didn't need to worry about with my insurance was very different. Um it's actually very different now uh than it was even seven years ago when I started my my agency. Uh and it when I started my agency, I had five and a half years of experience in the in the business. Um, because I've seen a lot of new stuff come up since then. So, you know, having an agent or or having uh having somebody who's an expert in any product or service that you are not yourself very familiar with, if if they do a good job, if if they have a good reputation, if they're willing to speak with you and explain things to you and be straight with you about, that's to my mind, uh a good value. Uh so for the same reason I wouldn't represent myself in court. I wouldn't try to do surgery on myself outside of a disaster scenario. Uh I wouldn't necessarily try to fix my own vehicle if the dam or what was going on with the vehicle was outside of my experience or expertise or skill set, uh, which again is basically anything outside of changing the oil or maybe the spark plugs. Um, you know, I would probably spend more time and effort and money uh, you know, doing that myself than paying somebody who, you know, I knew could do the good job right, who knew where to source the parts, who had that expertise and that experience. You know, that's that's what we pay people to do stuff for. You know, that's what we have specialization in our economy.

SPEAKER_02:

Tim, uh, thank you for highlighting the differences between flashy BS ads and the real value of having an agent on your side. All right, brother. You have a great rest day. Thanks again for straightening that out for us.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, thank you, buddy.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a wrap on this episode of the Walters Agency Podcast. Ready to find the right coverage for your home business or family? Call or text 423-417-2070 for a free 20 minute consultation. Until next time, stay covered, stay protected, and keep winning with the Walters Agency.