TAG Membership Advantages
The Advantage Group is receptive to new agencies that are highly successful on their own and do not of necessity need to partner or join together with a group. The new member due diligence process can be lengthy.
Membership in The Advantage Group brings the members a number of advantages they are generally unable to obtain on their own. These advantages are earned through superior performance in terms of combined volume, growth and profitability. TAG's performance record allows members to enjoy the most favorable agreements offered by carriers to their largest agents.
Members have access to many more carriers than a small to medium size stand-a-lone independent agency would be able to attract. TAG currently represents 28 insurance companies.
Membership generally brings about significantly increased carrier clout and influence not available to most individual agencies. By aggregating member volumes, often, TAG becomes one of the largest agencies representing the carrier in the NW Washington marketplace. Our core carriers have learned, to their benefit, the "whole of The Advantage Group is greater than the sum of its parts."
Membership provides a high level of camaraderie with fellow members. In a continually changing and complex insurance environment it is a comfort to have a close group of "business friends" who understand your business and share your concerns and problems. It is helpful to be able to talk about the issues of the day with your fellow members - all while maintaining your individual independence to run your day-to-day operations without a competitor or TAG Home Office continually looking over your shoulder. Members are not required to change their business model to fit The Advantage Group.
Membership provides marketing assistance. When faced with the challenge of placing a class of business you are not familiar with you have a group of members who can advise how they have handled similar risks and the best markets to approach. Such advice and counsel is almost a daily occurrence within TAG.
TAG membership provides the ability to position your agency as part a much larger and sophisticated insurance organization than your competitor down the street. You can tell customers and prospects that doing business with your agency gives them the best of all worlds. As a TAG member your agency combines all the capabilities of a large broker - the 17th largest in the Puget Sound area with 20 agency locations - with the personal attention and friendly service of a community based agency. TAG is ranked the 94th largest privately held broker by the Insurance Journal.
Members benefit from professional management. TAG is organized under a formal LLC Operating Agreement supplemented by an associated Operating Procedures Manual. TAG, the holding company, is managed day-to-day by an Executive Director with 40 years insurance experience - 35 years with Safeco and 22 years serving as a senior field or Home Office executive. Management responsibility is shared with three TAG agency principals elected to staggered three year terms of office. None-the-less, decisions are a group process and all members have an equal vote.
TAG membership provides a built in perpetuation option, call it a "second right of refusal," operating above and beyond any internal perpetuation plans that may currently be in place. Perpetuation details are part of the LLC Operating Agreement.
Finally, The Advantage Group is an alliance of Northwest agents as contrasted to an aggregator group with the Home Office located in another part of the country. At the moment the members are NW Washington centered. The group is focused, as much as this kind of thing is possible, on "owning our little corner of the world." By that we mean focusing significant volume on a group of core carriers so that we are very important to those companies. The idea is to position ourselves such that we have a strong relationship, both business and personal.
