Pros
Well known insurance company. Decent policies, not the best, but not the worst. Decent claims service - really the main bad part is my clients having a hard time accessing their claims adjuster due to them not answering the phone and end of day hours ending at 4:30 pm. Good training for selling personal lines insurance, but zero training for all other policies. My district manager is cool.
Cons
They like to make it difficult to succeed. Ive been with them 4 years and they've lowered our commission 3 separate times already. You're supposed to be an independent business owner, but you don't get to sell the products you want, you get to sell what Farmers wants. Otherwise they make it impossible to earn bonuses, and threaten to let you go. Over the years, most changes they've made have negatively effected their agents: adding multiple/redundant steps for accessing clients and prospects; multiple pop up windows; commission cuts; stricter guidelines for insuring people and business' resulting in fewer people being qualified to be insured with Farmers; continually adding requirements to be Farmers compliant, costing agencies $$$; pushing out smaller agencies, meaning they're making it difficult for smaller agencies to survive; out sourcing the agents Call Center to overseas; refusing to train new call center employees; irritating call system. A few years ago, when I started, they were trying to hire a lot of new agencies all over the nation, now, 4 years later, they are trying to push us out of the company. Encourage you to go into debt instead of financially helping us with marketing and hiring employees to grow at a rate they want. They teach antiquated marketing techniques. They nickel and dime you for a lot of things such as you gotta pay for your Farmers email address; website that you cant customize; E&O insurance is expensive; MVR fees; if they happen to GIVE you a policy, you only earn 40% of the already low commission, but still have to service the client like everybody else.