hello, and welcome to another episode of themurray group mailbag. my name is ryan hanley. i'm the director of marketingand sales here for the murray group. in each episode we answer one questionsubmitted directly by people in the community who are interested in somethingabout insurance, have a question, looking for an answer. we've putit to video, because we figure if one person has the question then we knowmore people do, and we want to provide easy public access, completely free,for people to find answers to their insurance questions. as you can tell, the show's unscripted. today'squestion comes from tammy,
who lives in ballston spa. she asked, "whatis the difference between an insurance company and an insurance agency?" very, very common question. a lot of peopleuse the two terms almost interchangeably. insurance companies and insuranceagencies are two completely separate entities. the insurancecompany is the organization with which you actually have the insurancecontract with. you pay your premiums to the insurance company. in theevent that you ever have a claim, the insurance company is the one that paysyou for your loss. travelers, adirondack, new york central mutual, statefarm, geico, these are all
insurance companies. the murray group is an insurance agency. weare insurance advisors. we basically translate the insurance contract,the language. we have experience in the way that insurance policieswork. and agencies like ours, which is an independent insurance agency,we take the different companies and we help you find the best coverage, thebest price, the best product for you and your particular situation. there are three different setups. you cango directly to insurance companies. that would be your geicos. youcan go through agencies that only
write with one company. these are called captiveinsurance agencies. that would be state farm, nationwide, allstate.or, you can go through an independent insurance agency who can writewith whatever carrier they feel best suits their people, many times multiplecarriers. in our particular agency, we actually haveover 35 contracts with different carriers, all to suit the various needs ofour particular client base. every independent insurance agency has multiplecontracts. the difference between the two is an insuranceagency is your advocate, is going to fight for you and work with you inthe event that something
happens or you have a life change and needa particular product, whereas the insurance company is the provider of theinsurance and is more concerned about making sure they run theirbusiness in a way that if something happens they can pay you for thatdamage. so you, insurance consumer, the insurance agency sits betweenyou, you are the insurance consumer, and the insurance company who youultimately have the contract with. if you have questions about that process,if that seems kind of convoluted, please just ask them in the comments below.i hope, tammy, that answered
your question about the difference betweenwhat an insurance company is and an insurance agency, two completely separateentities. if you, who are watching, have an additionalinsurance question you can always leave that in the comments below. youcan go to our facebook page, just search for the murray group and you'llfind us. or, you can send us an e-mail at insurance@murraygrp.com. that'sinsurance@murraygrp.com. we'll do our best to make sure that your question getsanswered in one of the future episodes of the murray group mailbag. thankyou.