re: To Insurance Agents: Captive or Independent?

I don't know how big you are. I'm small enough that the resources provided by IIABA, which are extensive, is enough.

Also, unless the business consultant is specific to the AA system, I can't imagine they'd be of huge benefit to me. If you go to a bank and try to get financed to acquire an agency. The banker won't usually lend on a stream of revenue. There are some that specialize in this, and do lend, but that's not the norm. My analogy is this, if a good commercial banker doesn't understand your business, how would a general business consultant?

We used the latest version of Applied, and had our own server. I moved to TAM Online, which is Applied, but on their cloud. Two cloud system for backup. Applied isn't perfect. Neither is AMS. There are a ton of other agency automation systems out there, but really, Applied and AMS are the only two viable alternatives for this. We upload/download everything we can. Great for accounting etc, but does tend to history, or wipe out uw info. The balancing act here again. Being a producer versus running your business. The benefit of accounting and less data entry outweighs the partial loss of uw info. Everyone is different. If your agency is constantly rewriting, or remarketing accounts, the benefit analysis might be different for you.