Justin, what do you do at Treasure State Insurance?
We're a brokerage, so basically there's two types of agencies. There's captive and uncaptive. Captive agencies are going to be like your State Farm, your Farmers, where all they can do is offer you one or the other. Being us, as a brokerage, we're appointed with everybody else. We're appointed with over 15 carriers—we can shop the market. We would be your agent with whoever we place you with. We're not subject to one carrier, we have the ability to move clients around if need be.
Can you tell us how that process works? How are you working on behalf of your client?
One benefit that we have is we work hand-in-hand with all of our regional reps, our claims team. We are local agents so if somebody does have issues, whether it be rate increases or issues with the claim not being paid out fairly, we go to bat for them. In being local agents we're able to do a lot between the clients and the carriers. You'll see a lot of our Google reviews are people praising what we've done for them and working with them to understand what their coverages are and what they should be and how we can use their coverages to pay them back properly when there's an issue.
Can you describe what your most common type of insurance plans are for clients?
We basically do everything but life and health. On the personal side, we're able to ensure anything from your home to autos, pet coverage, your recreational vehicles—boats, motor homes, trailers, campers. I'd say that's the majority of our business where maybe another 40% is commercial. Most businesses would have a general liability policy at least, where it just protects them from any lawsuit that may arise from the work they may perform, the services they're providing. We do a lot of policies for contractors and tradesmen, which seems to be popular around here. Up at the lake we're doing a lot of vacation homes, secondary homes, and recreational vehicles like your boats, jet skis, things like that.
You mentioned Flathead Lake and vacation or secondary homes. Can you shed some light on investment properties and what your company can offer someone if they're looking to get into some real estate venture?
I think the biggest thing that I would recommend is just making sure that you're getting the proper coverages because you could have a homeowner's policy, you could have a secondary homeowner's policy but if any of those properties are being rented out, there are changes that we need to make to note that there are people occupying the property that do not own or have any insurable value in that property, which brings on a lot larger liability risk. Short term rentals are much different than long term rentals as far as liability goes.
Do you have tips for someone who is a homeowner or anyone who has an investment in the home space?
Currently we're seeing a lot of price increases across the board. The biggest thing is just making sure that your home is accurately insured because since 2020, prices and reconstruction costs and materials have skyrocketed.
"We would be your agent with whoever we place you with. We're not subject to one carrier, we have the ability to move clients around if need be."