"It could happen today!"
"An earthquake is inevitable, but the disaster is not."
"You can’t predict an earthquake, but you can prepare for one!"
"Educate, Mitigate, Insure!"
"California is a beautiful state, but is not without its faults!"
As an agent, you have probably used these catchy messages - or some variation of them - as you encourage your customers to strongly consider earthquake insurance as an important part of their emergency preparedness plan.
We've Come a Long Way - Let's Keep It Up!
Thanks to the efforts of thousands of California insurance professionals, CEA has reached yet another milestone as we close in on 1.1 million CEA policies-in-force. And, recently CEA recorded the second highest monthly increase in new policies in its 23-year history.
However, with an estimated 87 percent of California property owners still not insured for an earthquake, now is not the time to rest on these laurels.
We Want to Hear from You
With that in mind, we are continuing to ramp up our agent support and outreach efforts as our CEA Agent and Community Liaisons, Lynda Foster and myself, Mark Toohey, devote the next several months to spending even more time in the field working to support agents in their education and sales efforts.
Expect to hear from Lynda and me as we embark on a “listening tour” of sorts: we will be reaching out to as many agents as possible to gain a better understanding of the challenges and obstacles you face in selling earthquake insurance. Additionally, we want to learn from you the “best practices” you have found to be successful in convincing customers to strongly consider—and ultimately purchase—CEA coverage.
We’re anxious to meet with agents and their agency’s staff to explain all that CEA has to offer, including our agent tools, resources, certified agent training programs and our underutilized Marketing Value Program (MVP).
We want to know what the challenges, obstacles and impediments are when it comes to selling CEA policies. We want to hear from those of you who have a book of business that includes a significant percentage of CEA policies. We want to learn from you how CEA policies stack up in terms of price, coverage and deductible options.
We want you to tell us what reasons the vast majority of your homeowner’s insurance customers give when saying no to earthquake insurance coverage. Also, we want your thoughts on how we can do a better job of promoting CEA’s retrofitting grant program for policyholders, CEA Brace + Bolt (CEA BB).
And, we want to know what additional sales tools and resources we can arm you with to give you a better shot at convincing more of your homeowners customers to purchase earthquake insurance.
Bottom line? We’re all in when it comes to stepping up our efforts to help you increase your CEA policy sales.
We’re Here to Help
Remember:
- 87 percent of Californians are uninsured for earthquake damage to their homes.
- California is home to 2/3 of our nation’s earthquake risk
- Back-to-back 6.4 and 7.1 magnitude earthquakes in Ridgecrest are still fresh in the minds of many folks in Southern California.
- This year has milestone anniversaries of two major earthquakes in highly populated areas (Northridge in January of 1994 and Loma Prieta in October of 1989).
With all of this information, we hope you can agree that there has never been a better time to sell CEA.
We are here to help you in any way we can.
Contact us today to request a visit from Mark or Lynda!
Mark Toohey, who is based in Southern California, joined CEA in January 2018 after a career in government affairs and media relations with Farmers Insurance. Our Northern California liaison, Lynda Foster, worked many years for State Farm in a variety of roles, including claims and training, before coming to CEA in early 2019.