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180 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

Other MAPs that we discussed earlier are organi-
zations like SIAA (of which my company, One Agents
Alliance, is a member) are agency development organi-
zations or aggregators. According to the Conning study,
approximately twenty-six percent of all independent
agencies belonged to this type of MAP as of 2018.
Depending upon your business goals and your needs,
you may want to take advantage of one or more of these
kinds of Market Access Providers.

Staying Current

There are three periodicals that I recommend every
agency owner subscribe to. They are free of charge
(though one requires membership in IIABA) and all
are full of useful information about the state of the
industry, insurance carrier operations, marketing, sales,
and other topics of interest to agency owners. The first
publication is Insurance Journal, published weekly. The
second is Rough Notes, which is also published weekly.
Both of these magazines publish market guides, which
can also be very helpful in finding appropriate markets
for your client’s business insurance. If you belong to the
Independent Agents & Brokers of America, you will
also receive as a benefit of membership their magazine
Independent Agent, which you will also find useful.

Highly Recommended Resources

There is an endless numbers of books that may be rec-
ommended to the new agency founder. To the degree
you have time to read them, you will find them useful
and helpful as you build your agency (one of the hall-
marks of very successful entrepreneurs is a virtually
insatiable curiosity, desire to learn, and voracious reading