Brightway and Renegade Insurance: Choose Wisely

The millennial market has forced insurance brokerage models to evolve to address the changing priorities of consumers. A landscape dominated by large captive agencies like State Farm as well as Allstate is slowly being replaced by insurance companies that give choices to the customer and provide advisory services. Agents of Brightway Insurance Franchise and Renegade Insurance enjoy similar propositions but through radically different delivery methods. So, how do they differ?

Let’s take a look at these brokerages trying to reshape P&C insurance: Brightway Insurance and Renegade Insurance.

Who is Brightway Insurance?

Brightway is an insurance brokerage that operates on a franchise system. The Brightway agents certainly have the support of a reasonably trusted name, remote servicing assistance, and a degree of operational autonomy.

Their specialty is personal property and vehicle insurance. They also offer other insurance like business, umbrella, and life. Brightway focuses on producing a win-win situation for its franchisees and their customers.

How do Brightway Insurance agents make money?

Brightway agents earn money based on a pre-agreed split with the franchise owner. Depending on the model of your choosing, the commission split varies from 60% to 100%. On renewals, Brightway offers 50% to 55% commission to the franchisees. A detailed breakdown as per Brightway Difference is as follows:

How does Brightway make money?

Brightway insurance franchise primarily operates on a franchise model with more than 200 franchise locations in 22 states. As such, it has franchise fees as well as operational fees, and the split of the sales commissions from the agents.

Let’s discuss the franchise fee Brightway gets:

Brightway’s franchise fee varies from $10,000 to $50,000 based on the models. However, to open an agency in Florida the franchise fee is $60,000. The total initial investment estimate for starting a Brightway insurance franchise ranges from $23,100 to $173,500 depending on the state an agent is operating from, the size of the agency, and a variety of other factors.

How wide is Brightway Insurance’s market?

Brightway has access to more than 190 carriers nationally, and numerous retail locations. The carrier access can vary depending on the market as well as other factors. Its retail agency model has produced over 100 agencies with over $1 million in annualized premium.

Additional benefits offered by Brightway include:

• Full back office and marketing support
• Training
• Financing available through Brightway

Who is Renegade Insurance?

Renegade Insurance is comparatively new to the insurance industry looking to reinvent the traditional insurance market.

The company is based on the belief that agents should be at the forefront of insurance. It is also backed by investors that have revolutionized the industries in which their companies are prevalent.

Renegade Insurance works on a brokerage model, and looks to facilitate the work its agents do with proprietary plug-and-play technology. The broker also offers agents high-quality remote servicing facilities.

How do Renegade Insurance agents make money?

Renegade Insurance agents make money through commissions from sales. The rate varies according to the line of business.

Renegade Insurance offers agents 80%-95% split on new personal lines policies, and 50% on renewals. Additionally, it also offers a 60% split on new commercial lines policies, and 40% on renewals.

How does Renegade Insurance make money?

Renegade Insurance makes money from the commission split that it offers agents. It also charges monthly fees to agents for using their technology, services, and for carrier access.

How wide is Renegade Insurance’s market?

Renegade Insurance partners with over 90 carriers and a few more are reportedly in the pipeline. It is already licensed in 48 states, but its formal operations are running in 7 states, which are GA, FL, TX, TN, NC, SC, and AL.

The broker also allows its agents to sell life and health policies.

Additional benefits offered by Renegade include:

• Proprietary technology that includes lead management software and rater
• Internal marketing team that generates leads and carries out local SEO for agents
• Complete customer service assistance
• Book roll assistance from carrier to carrier
• Product & sales training for agents

How do Renegade Insurance and Brightway Insurance compare?

Established in 2008, Brightway Insurance had its 200th franchise location open in 2020. Brightway Insurance is a franchisor, and as such, there are a few strings attached to running a Brightway insurance agency like getting a professional office space or a retail space location.

Renegade, which got its start in 2018 has been breaking barriers and growing rapidly to occupy the insurance market share. With no retail requirements, it has enabled independent insurance agents to start their business at a low investment.

Both agencies provide back-office support to agents, as well as benefits like training. Both agencies earn from commission splits. Additionally, Brightway also earns from franchise fees, and Renegade charges additional onboarding and monthly fees to agents.

In a hyper-saturated market, Renegade Insurance is looking to shift the focus away from selling insurance to enabling agents to become risk advisors. The company maintains that technology can be a significant enabler for progress, and disruption through technology is not only inevitable but very necessary. As such, Renegade has developed its own proprietary technology which includes an insurance rater. Likewise, Brightway uses insurance quoters and raters such as EZLynx.

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Brightway vs. Goosehead Insurance 2023

In a nutshell

Brightway’s business practices are commendable, and its offerings are consistent across the board. Renegade Insurance is a new insurance agency, which is here to solve the problems insurance agents face today. Big captive carriers like Allstate and Nationwide have started to see the value of independent agents, and have forayed into the independent market in some capacity.

If you’re an independent agent looking to be a part of one of these agencies, has this insurance blog been helpful to you? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us.