You see the trigger before the insurance does.

Why this shows up in your practice first

Personal insurance is the part of a client's financial picture that nobody reviews on a schedule. It renews by mail, the number moves a little, and it gets paid. Meanwhile the client buys a second house, puts the first one in a trust, finishes a renovation, inherits a collection, or sells a company.

Each of those changes what the insurance should look like. None of them generates a prompt to look at it. So the prompt, when it comes at all, comes from the professional who was in the room when the change happened. That is usually you.

The other reason it lands with advisors is that clients ask you. Questions like whether an umbrella limit is enough, whether the LLC belongs on the policy, or what happens now that a carrier has declined to renew, get asked of the person the client trusts most, who is frequently not their insurance agent.

What makes a good referral

The test is complexity, not wealth. We do not ask anyone to declare a net worth and we would rather you did not either. These are the signals that actually predict useful work:

• More than one residence, particularly when they sit in different states or one of them is empty for part of the year.
• A home that would be difficult to rebuild. Custom construction, an architect's design, a historic structure, or unusual materials. See custom homes and older and historic homes.
• Collections. Jewelry, art, wine, watches, firearms, instruments. Standard policies carry small internal limits for these.
• Property held in a trust or an entity, where the named insured may not match the deed. See trusts, LLCs and the named insured.
• A liability picture that grew. Rental property, board service, household staff, a public profile, watercraft, or young drivers.
• A placement problem. A non-renewal, a wildfire related decline, an inspection with conditions attached, or a rebuild estimate that came back far above the policy limit.
• A rural or remote property, where fire protection, water supply and access change the underwriting. See rural and remote homes.

Two or three of those in the same household is a strong signal. One of them alone can still be worth a conversation, particularly if it is new.

Trigger events worth watching for

If you want one thing to take away from this page, it is this list. These are the moments when a personal insurance program most often stops fitting, and when the client is already thinking about change.

• A home purchase or a build. The window before closing is the most useful one, because valuation, ownership structure and placement can all be handled at once rather than retrofitted.
• A liquidity event. A business sale, an equity event, an exercise. The liability picture usually changes the same month, and the umbrella almost never does.
• A renovation. This is the single most common point at which a homeowners policy quietly stops fitting, and it is easier to address before the permit than after the framing. See renovation insurance.
• An inheritance. Property, vehicles, jewelry or art arriving at once, often held in an estate or trust while the paperwork settles.
• A non-renewal or a cancellation. This is a market decision rather than a verdict on the house, and it is time sensitive. See after a non-renewal.
• A new collection, or a collection that got appraised. A current appraisal is often the first time anyone learns the internal limit was a fraction of the value.
• A move across state lines, or a household that now owns in two states. Forms, notice rules and carrier availability all change at the border. See multi-home and multi-state households.
• A marriage, a divorce or a death, each of which changes who the named insured should be.
• Hiring household staff, which introduces employment and workers compensation questions a personal policy was not built for. See domestic employee insurance.

How the process works

Deliberately simple, because complicated referral processes do not get used.

1. You introduce us, by email, by phone, or by sending the client to the review or quote page. An introduction with the trigger event named is more useful than one without.
2. We contact the client and ask what they have. Usually that means declarations pages for the home, auto, umbrella and any schedules, plus a description of what the household actually is.
3. We read it. Reconstruction estimate, settlement basis, valuables limits, umbrella attachment, named insured, occupancy, and whatever the trigger event raised.
4. We tell the client what we would pay attention to. On the review path that is where it ends, with no pricing and no obligation. On the quote path we approach markets with the client's permission.
5. We report back to you only if the client says to. Some clients want you in the loop and some do not, and that is their call rather than ours.

Clients regularly come through this and change nothing, because what they had was already well built. We say so when that is the answer. An advisor who sends people into a process that always concludes with a sale stops being able to send people.

Confidentiality

Client information goes where it needs to go to do the work, and nowhere else.

• We use what the client gives us to read their program and, with their permission, to approach markets on their behalf.
• We do not share a referred client's information back to you without their permission, even though you made the introduction.
• We do not publish client names, use them as examples, or name them in marketing without permission.
• We do not add a referred client to unrelated marketing without consent, and anyone can ask us to stop contacting them.
• Appraisals, schedules, financial documents and personal details supplied for a placement are handled as confidential client material.

If your own firm has a data handling or compliance requirement that governs how an introduction is made, tell us and we will work inside it. Your obligations to your client come first.

What we will do

• Read the client's existing program before suggesting anything.
• Explain what we see in plain language, including the parts that are already fine.
• Tell the client when their current coverage is well built and they should stay where they are.
• Describe how a coverage works, where the limits sit and what a form actually says.
• Approach markets on the client's behalf when they ask us to, and say plainly what is and is not available.
• Work alongside your advice on the structure your client already has in place.
• Keep you informed when the client asks us to.

What we will not do

This half matters more than the first half, because it is the part that protects your relationship with your client.

• We do not give legal, tax, accounting, investment or financial planning advice, and we do not hold ourselves out as qualified to. Where a question is yours, we will say so and send it back to you.
• We do not promise a response time, an outcome or a price. Availability, eligibility and pricing are decided by carriers in underwriting and vary by carrier, by property and by state.
• We do not promise that any named carrier will write any particular state, property or client. That is an underwriting decision, not a marketing claim.
• We do not tell your client to unwind a structure you built. If the insurance and the structure disagree, we describe the insurance side and bring it back to you.
• We do not cross sell a referred client into unrelated lines on the back of an introduction you made for a specific purpose.
• We do not pay for introductions, and we do not ask you to accept anything that could complicate your own compliance position.
• We do not use your client list. One introduction is one introduction.

A checklist you can actually use

Short enough to keep beside a client review. If two or more are true, the personal insurance is worth a look.

• Does the client own more than one residence, or a residence in another state?
• Would the home be expensive or difficult to rebuild, for reasons an estimator would miss?
• Has there been a renovation, a build or a purchase in the last two years, or is one coming?
• Is any property held in a trust, an LLC or another entity?
• Is there jewelry, art, wine or any other collection that has never been scheduled or appraised recently?
• Is there a personal umbrella at all, and when was the limit last revisited?
• Has the client had a non-renewal, a cancellation, an inspection with conditions, or a surprise at renewal?
• Does the household employ anyone who works at the home?
• Has there been a liquidity event, an inheritance, a marriage, a divorce or a death since the policy was written?
• Are there watercraft, recreational vehicles or collector cars that may sit outside the umbrella schedule?

None of those questions asks about net worth, and none of them requires the client to disclose anything they would not already tell you.

Working with us

Our private client focus is Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and each of those states works differently enough to be worth reading on its own: Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

If you want to understand the work before sending anyone, the private client overview is the place to start and the learning center collects the underlying answers. When you are ready, a coverage review is the lowest commitment introduction you can make, and a private client quote is the right path for a client who already wants terms.