Restoration logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Restoration logo
  • NEWS
  • PRODUCTS
    • New Products & Technologies
    • Submit Your Product
    • Interactive Product Spotlights
  • EDUCATION
    • KnowHow.
    • Podcasts
    • Trade Shows & Expos
    • Training & Certification
    • Webinars
    • Whitepapers
  • TOPICS
    • Water Damage
    • Fire & Smoke Damage
    • Mold
    • Contamination
    • Odor
    • Contents
    • Architecture
    • Catastrophe
    • Cleaning
  • BUSINESS
    • Managing Your Business
    • Insurance/Legal Matters
  • BUYER'S GUIDE
  • VIDEOS
    • Ask Annissa
    • Ask the Expert
    • Ironclad Marketing Minute
    • TradeTalks
    • Video Channel
  • INFOCENTER
    • Mold and Mycotoxins
  • THE EXPERIENCE
    • Convention & Trade Show
    • R&R Special Issue
  • EMAG
    • eMagazine
    • Archive Issues
    • Contact
    • Advertise
  • SIGN UP
Insurance/Legal Matters in RestorationManaging Your Restoration Business

Modern Marketing to Insurance Agencies

By David J. Dybdahl
modern marketing to insurance agencies
modern marketing to insurance agencies
modern marketing to insurance agencies
modern marketing to insurance agencies
modern marketing to insurance agencies
modern marketing to insurance agencies
September 19, 2016

Every restoration contractor seems to know an insurance agency can be a good source for referrals. Most marketers have noticed marketing to insurance agencies is becoming less productive over time. The good news is – there is a way to reverse the trend by understanding how and why it is happening.

What Changed?

What changed in insurance agent restoration project referrals game? For years now, one of the largest insurance agent trade associations in the country has been teaching members to never refer a restoration firm to their customers, along with a long list of other things to do or not do to avoid being sued by their clients for malpractice. In providing their customers with a recommendation to hire you, the insurance agent takes on some potential liability if their client is damaged in some way by something you do. From this perspective, referring you to their customers for restoration services is all downside risk for the insurance agent. The professional errors and omissions loss prevention class is taught to thousands of insurance agency managers every year and has a lot to do with your decreasing project referrals from insurance agencies.

The Positive Side

There is a positive side to the risk management message. In that same errors and omissions loss prevention class mentioned above, insurance agency managers are taught it’s a bad idea to leave their customers ignorantly uninsured for fungus/mold/bacteria related losses caused by the “mold exclusion” in virtually every insurance policy they sell. 

Today, 95 percent of their commercial customers who own or manage commercial property are ignorantly and needlessly uninsured for mold/bacteria related losses. By helping insurance agents avoid the uninsured mold/bacteria loss exposure in their customer base, a restorer can become an integral part of an insurance agency’s risk management strategy. As an added benefit, the restorer can help the insurance agency produce new income through the sale of needed environmental insurance policies to their customer base of commercial property owners. By harnessing the same risk management forces that are driving the decline in insurance agent referrals for post-loss restoration jobs, a restorer can gain more marketing leverage within an insurance agency than has ever been achievable in the past.

Get an Agency’s Attention

To get insurance agencies to pay attention to your marketing message today, you need to do more than deliver donuts and business cards to the reception desk or claims person. You need to become relevant to the insurance agent’s business. This is easier to do than you might think. 

Commercial property insurance buyers have the same problems with their insurance coverage that remediators do for claims associated with pollution, fungus, bacteria and, by default, Category 3 water. The property and liability insurance policies sold to a school system, condominiums, apartments, a hotel or a shopping mall have the same pollution/fungus/mold/bacteria exclusions a mold remediator has. As a result of these exclusions, a water loss on a commercial property associated in any way or in any sequence to a speck of fungi or bacteria is almost always not adequately insured today. 

For example, most commercial property insurance policies today technically have a sublimit of less than $25,000 to pay for the entire loss if a drop of Category 3 water is involved in a water loss. 

For the same reasons a restoration contractor needs a customized Contractors Environmental Liability insurance policy matched to their general liability insurance coverage, a property owner needs a customized Environmental Impairment Liability insurance (EIL) policy to fill the gaps in insurance coverage created by universal coverage restrictions for fungus and bacteria related losses today.

Having Coverage & A Plan of Action

In my insurance brokerage firm, we have private labeled a customized environmental insurance product which we call the Property Environmental Risk Management (PERM) product line to specifically target commercial properties. Our PERM product line combines a customized environmental insurance policy, with a pre-placed drying agreement to create affordable EIL insurance policies for commercial insurance buyers. The availability of environmental insurance on commercial property is not limited to the PERM product line. The EIL insurance for commercial properties is widely available through thousands of sellers in the U.S. and the premium credits could be duplicated by a good insurance product developer. For this article, I will use the term PERM as a conceptual insurance product to explain why it connects restoration services to the risk management needs of insurance agencies. 

The PERM product line is a custom crafted environmental insurance policy designed to be sold through local insurance agents to cover a portfolio’s commercial properties. A “Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Plan” is a critical loss control component in our PERM product line.

A Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Plan is essentially a preplaced drying agreement with an IICRC certified firm. The plan contains a commitment by the restoration firm will show up at a water loss quickly. An effective Water Intrusion Mitigation Plan can be as simple as a qualified restorer agreeing to show up with drying equipment within a few hours of being called.

Insurance Agents Need Your Help

With a 95 percent fundamental coverage defect rate on the insurance coverage for fungi and bacteria-related losses in their commercial property client base, insurance agents need some help in getting their customers insured for water losses involving mold/bacteria or at least not leaving them ignorantly and needlessly uninsured for these losses. As a trained water mitigator you can offer an insurance agency a great deal of assistance in reducing the professional liability loss exposure of insurance agents. 

A property owner can cut the cost of their environmental insurance on their buildings in half, and the limits of insurance available for losses related to microbial matter by at least ten-fold if they have a Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Plan the insurance company providing the PERM insurance product will accept. 

The biggest barrier to success in the promotion of Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Plans to the customers of insurance agents is that most agents today are oblivious to their need for help in this area. This is because when the insurance companies slammed “toxic mold” exclusions into virtually every property and liability insurance policy sold after 2005, nobody told the insurance agents how the new exclusions worked. Therefore, the agents have not told their commercial property owners they are uninsured for these common losses. In the past, there was no place for insurance agents to learn indoor environmental risk management and insurance.

A Modern Marketing Message to Insurance Agents 

Here is a restoration company’s marketing message to insurance agents that will be music to the agents’ ears:

“Through our Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Services, we can help your commercial property owners obtain environmental insurance covering mold and bacteria at significant premium reductions”.

I am an insurance broker and own a national award-winning insurance agency. Any services vendor coming into my office with a message like that and I am going to listen. Reducing my client’s insurance costs through better loss control is immediately relevant to me. It gives me a competitive advantage over other insurance brokers. 

Reducing a customer’s insurance premiums will be relevant to every insurance agent in the country, if the agent has any understanding about mold/bacteria exclusions. The problem is most insurance agents do not, yet. The leading insurance education providers in the U.S. are trying to enlighten them through CE classes, webcasts and articles in their trade journals. More has been done on the educational front of this topic in the past 12 months than over the past 12 years combined. 

You do not need to know very much about the commercial insurance packages on property owners to deliver this message. Think of the preplaced drying services message as the bait you are throwing out into the lake. Once you get a nibble, it is a good idea to exit the technical insurance discussion and refer the interested insurance agent to the wholesale insurance broker you are working with on the PERM concept insurance product line to reel the agency prospect in for you.

Marketing Leverage

One major advantage is marketing leverage. One commercial insurance agency can represent hundreds of property owners who have thousands of properties. One sale to the insurance agency manager accesses thousands of commercial properties for the restoration firm. 

Another point of leverage is who in the agent’s customer base of property owners is making the decision on which restorer gets hired. Take for example a city with six hospitals and clinics, all with one owner. Chances are each facility manager will have their own go-to restoration firm for water intrusion events. The marketer of the restoration services would have to maintain six facility manager relationships to secure the drying work for all six hospitals. However once a “Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Plan” becomes a requirement for the PERM insurance product line, it will be the CFO who makes decisions on insurance making the call on who provides drying services. The CFO could lose significant insurance premium reductions and coverage expansions without an insurance company-approved Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation Plan. That connection back to the environmental insurance coverage with millions of dollars of potential insurance coverage on the buildings, potentially being compromised based on the restoration vendor chosen, will usually leave the CFO holding trump cards over the facility managers in deciding who the water mitigation vendor is going to be. 

By making an insurance agency aware that your Water Intrusion Loss Mitigation capabilities make properties insurable under a Property Environmental Risk Management type insurance policy at affordable rates, you will be able to: 

  • Secure solid first response calls, in portfolios of commercial property before there is an insurance claim;
  • Make the value propositions of your competitors irrelevant;
  • Make the incumbent positions of your competitor’s sales efforts irrelevant;
  • Take price off the table in the selection criteria for drying services.

Winning the Insurance Agency Marketing Game

If a property owner can show their environmental insurance company they have a plan to quickly respond to a water loss, a plan that the environmental insurance company approves of, their environmental insurance rates can be cut in half and the amount of coverage for mold and bacteria will usually increase by at least ten-fold at no additional premium. With benefits like this, you would think every restorer would be pitching the benefits of a water intrusion loss mitigation plan to insurance agents. 

Most restorers are not going to be able to teach insurance agents the technical aspects of insurance coverage, especially when it comes to fungus and bacteria exclusions. This is a complex subject for the agents. However, by presenting the potential to reduce the EIL insurance costs in the agent’s customer base by half and then referring the agent to someone who can help them understand the coverage issues solved by the PERM product concept, the door should be open in the agency for the restorer to be the go-to firm for all of the agencies first response drying calls from commercial property owners. 

The modern insurance agency marketing goal for a restorer is to present the benefits that preplaced drying services can create by making environmental insurance affordable to the insurance agent’s commercial property customer base. Once that is accomplished, everything else falls into place for the remediator to automatically receive the first responder call by the customers of an insurance agency. 

When everything works as designed, the restorer will be getting the emergency response call before the insurance agent does. This modern insurance agency marketing plan is driven by the insurance agency’s risk management needs, the same driving force that is making traditional marketing to insurance agencies less productive over time. Harness that driving force and you can make your competitors marketing pitch to insurance agencies irrelevant.
 

KEYWORDS: insurance adjusters liability restoration business marketing

Share This Story

Looking for a reprint of this article?
From high-res PDFs to custom plaques, order your copy today!

David dybdahl

David Dybdahl is the president and founder of American Risk Management Resources Network LLC (ARMR). He is an insurance broker, professional insurance educator and expert witness on insurance matters involving billions in litigated damages in multiple federal courts. For 18 years he has served on various IICRC Consensus Drafting Committees. In March of 2020 he played a key role in producing the Restoration Industry Association's and IICRC COVID-19 Report to create a legally defensible disinfecting protocol for coronavirus virus in buildings. ARMR is the #1 seller of insurance to cleaning and restoration firms in the U.S. The customized insurance policies ARMR designs are sold through local insurance agents and brokers in all 50 states. David can be reached at dybdahl@armr.net and his cell is (608) 513-6101. He welcomes questions and inquiries.

Recommended Content

JOIN TODAY
To unlock your recommendations.

Already have an account? Sign In

  • mold remediation

    Fighting Mold and Bacteria Damage

    Successful mold remediation can be multidisciplinary,...
    Contamination Restoration & Remediation​
    By: Josh Woolen
  • certifications and licenses for restoration professionals

    Certifications and Licenses Every Restoration Company Needs

    Restoration companies need to make sure they have the...
    Restoration Training/Education
    By: Sharon Elzarat
  • a wall covered in moss and fungus

    Zero Tolerance for Toxic Molds: Essential Steps for Successful Remediation

    Understanding the importance of zero tolerance for toxic...
    Mold Remediation
    By: Michael A. Pinto CSP, SMS, CMP, RTPE, FLS, ERS and Kendra Seymour
You must login or register in order to post a comment.

Report Abusive Comment

Manage My Account
  • eNewsletter
  • Online Registration
  • Subscription Customer Service
  • Manage My Preferences

More Videos

Popular Stories

water on basement floor

How Much Water Causes Water Damage?

hurricane

To CAT or not to CAT? Who Should Stay Home

Measuring business skillsets

Overlooking the Basics: Why New Restoration Businesses Are Failing Prematurely

Submit Your New Product/Technology to R&R!

Would you like to promote a new restoration, remediation or cleaning product/technology with Restoration & Remediation? Fill out the question below to start your submission:

Events

September 3, 2025

The Experience Convention and Trade Show

The Experience Convention & Trade Show logoJoin us in Las Vegas for The Experience Convention & Trade Show, the leading event for cleaning, restoration, and remediation pros, packed with hands-on demos, expert speakers, and high-impact networking. Happening September 3–5, 2025 at Caesars Forum—this is where the industry comes to learn, connect, and grow!

View All Submit An Event

Poll

Doffing PPE

When you are doffing your PPE, do you sanitize between every step?
View Results Poll Archive

Products

The Cleaning, Restoration, Inspection, and Safety Glossary

The Cleaning, Restoration, Inspection, and Safety Glossary

The Cleaning, Restoration, Inspection, and Safety Glossary.

See More Products
Prepare for CATASTROPHE with R&R!

Related Articles

  • insurance policy form

    Bailees Insurance: What Every Restoration Firm Needs to Know

    See More
  • Marketing Your Restoration Business through Claims Networks

    See More
  • Dybdahl_FT

    Roof Repair Leads to $1 Million Mold Claim: An Insurance Claim Case Study

    See More

Related Products

See More Products
  • insurance.png

    2025 National Renovation & Insurance Repair Estimator

  • secrets-of-insurance-game.jpg

    Secrets of the Insurance Game

  • thumbnail.jpg

    Complete Marketing Manual for Restoration & Mitigation Contractors

See More Products

Related Directories

  • LearnToRestore.com

    LearnToRestore.com is the leading IICRC-approved school with certification courses in water, fire, smoke, odor, contents processing, and more. Learn and earn your certification in person or online with our live-stream classes. Our expert-led training prepares you with essential skills to excel in the restoration industry!
×

Stay ahead of the curve with our eNewsletters.

Get the latest industry updates tailored your way.

JOIN TODAY!
  • RESOURCES
    • Advertise
    • Contact Us
    • Directories
    • Store
    • Want More
    • Submit a Press Release
  • SIGN UP TODAY
    • Create Account
    • eNewsletters
    • Customer Service
    • Manage Preferences
  • SERVICES
    • Reprints
    • Marketing Services
    • Market Research
    • List Rental
    • Survey/Respondent Access
  • STAY CONNECTED
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • X (Twitter)
  • PRIVACY
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • TERMS & CONDITIONS
    • DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION
    • PRIVACY REQUEST
    • ACCESSIBILITY

Copyright ©2025. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing