Avoiding Scams / Agent Fraud
How to recognize agent fraud
The vast majority of licensed agents do exactly what they're supposed to: compare your options, submit your application accurately, and hand you your policy documents. A small number don't. Three specific behaviors are reliable warning signs regardless of how trustworthy or friendly an agent otherwise seems, and they're worth knowing before you're in the middle of an application.
A check made out to the agent, not the carrier
Your premium payment should always be made out to the insurance company, never to an individual agent or agency personally, and never handed over in cash. An agent asking you to write a check to them directly, or to pay them in cash "to save time" or "to process it for you," has no legitimate reason to make that request — it's also one of the more common ways an agent pockets a payment while a policy is never actually written.
Pressure to sign blank or incomplete forms
You should never be asked to sign a form with blank sections on the promise that "we'll fill in the rest later." A signature on a blank or incomplete application means you're agreeing to whatever gets written in afterward, by someone else, without your review — including answers to health questions that affect whether a future claim gets paid at all. Every field relevant to you should already be filled in before you sign anything.
Refusing to give you copies of what you signed
After you sign an application or a policy, you're entitled to a copy of it — not a summary, not a verbal recap, the actual document. An agent who's slow to provide it, vague about why, or who suggests you don't really need your own copy is giving you a reason to be concerned. Keep copies of everything you sign for as long as the policy is active.
What to do if you suspect fraud
Contact the insurance carrier directly — using contact information you find yourself, not a number the agent gave you — and ask them to confirm that a policy actually exists in your name and that any payment was applied to it. See our guide to verifying a company is legitimate for how to find that contact information independently, fast. If anything doesn't check out, or you can't get a straight answer, file a complaint with your state's department of insurance — the same regulator that licensed the agent in the first place. Complaints like this are exactly what that office exists to investigate, and filing one doesn't require you to have already proven anything, just a specific, honest account of what happened.