The Access Story

Our Journey

Phil and Lisa Wardell founded Access Insurance Underwriter, LLC. in January of 2000. Lisa encouraged and supported the idea that they needed to open their own agency and run it in a manner that was different from other agencies, especially the ones Phil had worked for in the past.

Phil, prior to starting Access with Lisa, had worked for two large agencies. After about 15 years of managing large agencies for others, Phil and Lisa realized that most agencies were not really on the side of the client, rather just the opposite was true.

Since agencies are paid commissions as a percentage of the client’s premium, the larger the premium that the client pays, the higher the commissions to the agency. To make matters worse, the agency owners actually incentivize the agents and customer service representatives, not for how much money they could save the clients on their policy premiums, but rather on how little work they had to do at renewal time, keeping the premiums either the same or even increasing them on the clients!

If an agent in these large agencies were to rewrite every policy or reduce the premiums too much on the policies that he/she was assigned to manage and renew, they would be fired!

Phil believed that there had to be a better way to run an agency, not only putting the client’s interest first but also making sure that each and every year the client’s policies were automatically and legitimately shopped with all available carriers to ensure that the client has the best rate and value.