What They Do
Insurance sales agents contact potential customers and sell one or more types of insurance. These agents explain various insurance policies and help clients choose the plans that suit them.
Duties
Insurance sales agents typically do the following:
- Contact potential clients to expand their own customer base
- Interview prospective clients to get information about their financial situation and discuss existing coverage
- Explain the features of various insurance policies
- Analyze clients’ current policies and suggest additions or other changes
- Customize insurance programs to suit individual clients
- Handle policy sales and renewals
- Assist clients with the insurance claims process
- Maintain client records
Insurance sales agents commonly sell one or more types of insurance, such as property and casualty, life, health, and long-term care.
Property and casualty insurance agents sell policies that protect people and businesses from financial loss resulting from automobile accidents or from fire, theft, and other events that damage property. For businesses, property and casualty insurance also covers claims related to workers’ compensation, product liability, and medical malpractice.
Life insurance agents specialize in selling policies that pay beneficiaries when a policyholder dies. Life insurance agents also sell annuities, which require the policyholder to make a single deposit or a series of payments in exchange for regular disbursements over time.
Health and long-term care insurance agents sell policies that cover some or all of the costs of medical care and of assisted-living services for older adults. They also may sell insurance for dental care and for short- and long-term disability.
Agents may specialize in selling any one of these products or function as generalists providing multiple products.
In addition to offering insurance, these agents may become licensed to sell mutual funds, variable annuities, and other securities. This practice is most common with life insurance agents who already sell annuities, but many property and casualty agents also sell financial products.
Many agents market their services to create or expand their own client base. For example, they may make sales calls to people who are not current clients, often through referrals from current clients.
Insurance agents may work for either a single company or several companies.
Captive agents are insurance sales agents who work exclusively for one company. They sell policies provided only by the company that employs them.
Independent insurance agents may sell the policies of several companies to match their clients' needs with the company that offers the best rate and coverage.
Insurance brokers work for insurance brokerage firms. They represent their clients, rather than insurers, and may offer advice about competing companies' rates, coverage, and reputation. Like agents, brokers may be either captive or independent; however, because independent brokers are not associated with insurance companies, they must involve an insurer or insurance agent to complete a sale.
Work Environment
Insurance sales agents held about 568,800 jobs in 2024. The largest employers of insurance sales agents were as follows:
| Insurance agencies and brokerages | 62% |
| Self-employed workers | 13 |
| Direct insurance (except life, health, and medical) carriers | 8 |
| Direct health and medical insurance carriers | 5 |
Most insurance sales agents work in office settings, although they may spend time traveling to meet with clients.
Work Schedules
Most insurance sales agents work full time.
How to Become One
Although employers typically require that agents have a high school diploma, they may prefer to hire agents who have a bachelor’s degree. Agents must be licensed in the states where they work.
Pay
The median annual wage for insurance sales agents was $60,370 in May 2024.
Job Outlook
Employment of insurance sales agents is projected to grow 4 percent from 2024 to 2034, about as fast as the average for all occupations.
About 47,000 openings for insurance sales agents are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.