USI Insurance Services reviews

TL:DR: this is a PE backed sweat shop that offers very little to it’s clients and producers Keep in mind that this review is specific to small commercial lines (Select). When you accept your offer to join the Select team you will feel accomplished as you’ve done a ton of interviews to get to this stage. About two months after joining the company, I looked back at my interview process and became suspicious that the recruiters and practice leader over prepared me for my interviews, likely because they have big incentives to grow headcount even if the people they hire aren’t a great fit. I believe this because most of my teammates left, were fired or produced very little business in their first 12 months at USI. They will coach you with their “solutions” to the point of exhaustion and pretend that selling commercial insurance is a science rather than an art. The company believes this because they’ve convinced themselves that small commercial is a high growth vertical based off the assumption that small business owners rarely change their agent. This is absolutely wrong because a small business owner cares more about price rather than coverage solutions. Their plan is too hire 100 producers every year, fully knowing that 10 of them will succeed and that everyone is else with either leave or get fired. Management will tout USI’s “resources” but you will find that the Omni and standard work products are lackluster. They will push you to sell the Omni platform and I honestly felt like a fraud touting its capabilities. It is a low tech PowerPoint generator and it offers very little value to clients. To add insult to injury, they are draconian about Producers being in the office. The recruiters will tout USI’s flexibility in respect to work life balance but management will expect you to be in the office 4x a week because they believe everyone can learn a lot of from their colleagues. Even if their colleagues are a bunch of life long producers who have have never made it beyond a $1k deal. Think about it, if your practice leader or Select colleagues were ever close to being a good Producer in the past, why are they in Select? Having a book of business that renews every year is 100x better than adhering to USI’s system. I believe that if we didn’t live in a low interest rate environment, USI wouldn’t exist today. The company frequently acquires other agencies but won’t report their organic growth. They also hired cheap sales coaching consultants to teach Practice Leaders how to get Producers excited about PEAK but they aren’t willing to offer any details about the company’s financials. They will squawk that USI stock doubles every five years but won’t comment on why. If they were serious about risk management they’d be concerned about the E&O exposure from promoting a phantom stock security that doesn’t have transparent financials. When successful producers leave, it’s their clients that lose the most. My clients now have to solely deal with their account manager, who will only market their account every three years. Overall, I worked with a lot of nice people but my experience with USI was disappointing. I hope this review provides good insight on the drawbacks of joining USI Select.

When acquiring new brokerage “assets”, USI specializes in draining every last ounce of drive and motivation from the annexed employees, leaving only the shells of their former professional selves. This is achieved through numerous perfected methods of demoralization and devaluation, including, but not limited to: • Miniscule or non-existent yearly pay increases. • Sub-par bonuses significantly lower than industry averages. • Severely limited amounts of PTO; USI managers discourage or prohibit employees from using what’s available – in addition, any yearly rollover amounts must be “re-accrued” throughout the following calendar year before being accessible, once again, to the employee. • USI touts their “Give Back” charitable policy; a day of forced volunteerism by employees in exchange for an additional day of PTO. Given their stinginess with the PTO accrual, it is a no-brainer for employees to participate. Over all a win; employees get an additional day off from the drudgery that is USI, and management gets fake bragging rights. • Silo of job duties - for example; if assigned with entry-level duties, these will remain your only job responsibilities throughout the entire tenure of your USI career. • Other than becoming a sales producer, there are no growth or career advancement opportunities for experienced client service professionals at USI. • Rigid systems and processes with no margin for customization; a “one size fits all” approach to client management and services. • Limited and very expensive healthcare benefit options. • No short-term disability coverage for newly acquired employees – Employees must accrue it with tenure and this is a very slow process. In order to get immediate coverage, you must trade your unused PTO for STD! If you were to become sick or disabled, and not have personal savings available to sustain you, you would be in serious financial straits while working for USI. • Multiple layers of useless middle-management; many of which often contradict themselves when enforcing the rigid USI policies. • The 2017 Christmas bonus consisted of fake M&M’s in a coffee mug that trumpeted the acquisition of the Wells Fargo Insurance Services division.