Twenty-one carriers. One agency, one phone call.

What "appointed" actually means

An insurance carrier does not let just anyone sell its policies. It reviews an agency, sets terms, and grants an appointment before that agency can quote and bind coverage on its behalf. Being appointed with 21 carriers means Leonard Butts Insurance Agency has gone through that process 21 separate times, with 21 separate companies, each with its own underwriting rules, its own pricing model and its own appetite for different kinds of risk.

That matters because no two carriers price the same driver, the same house or the same business the same way. One company may weight a homeowner's roof age heavily and another may weight it lightly. One may be aggressive on a new driver and cautious on an older home; another may be the reverse. An agency appointed with one carrier has one answer to give. An agency appointed with 21 has 21 answers to compare before recommending one.

A captive agent versus an independent agency

A captive agent works for one insurance company and represents that company's name on the door. They can only offer what that one company is willing to write, at the price that one company sets, under that one company's underwriting rules. If that company declines the risk or prices it high, the captive agent has nowhere else to send it.

An independent agency works for the customer, not for a single carrier. Leonard Butts Insurance Agency holds appointments with all 21 carriers listed on this page and is not paid more or less by the agency for placing a policy with one over another. The incentive lines up with finding the coverage that actually fits, not with steering everyone toward the same company's product because it is the only product on the shelf.

What the process looks like from your side

You describe the risk once. That might be a house, a car, a boat, a contracting business or a restaurant. Leonard Butts Insurance Agency takes that one description and shops it across the carriers appointed to write that type of coverage, rather than sending you off to fill out a separate application with each company yourself.

What comes back is not just a stack of numbers. The agency explains what actually differs between the quotes: different deductibles, different liability limits, different exclusions, different endorsements available. A cheaper quote with a thinner limit is not automatically the better quote, and a specialty carrier is sometimes the right fit for a risk a household-name company will not touch at all. That comparison is the actual work an independent agency does that a single-carrier agent structurally cannot.

Carriers with names you already know

Several of the 21 carriers write the everyday personal lines most households carry, including auto, home and renters coverage, and are names familiar from national advertising: Progressive, GEICO, Travelers, Nationwide, Liberty Mutual, The Hartford, State Auto and Allied. Being appointed with several of these at once is what lets the agency put the same driver or the same house in front of more than one of them and compare the actual numbers, rather than assuming the biggest advertiser is automatically the best fit for a given household.

Specialty and commercial appointments

A wider set of appointments exists specifically for risks that a standard personal or small-business carrier will not write, or will not write well: Chubb, Lloyd's, Hiscox, USLI, Applied Underwriters, Employers, CNA Surety and Guard. These are the appointments behind the agency's wider commercial book, covering contractors, churches, jewelers, woodworkers, videographers and special-event coverage, where a business needs a bond, a workers' compensation policy from a carrier that understands its trade, or a liability form written by a specialty or surplus-lines market rather than a mainstream one.

Property and life carriers

A third group covers property risks that need a more specific underwriting eye, and life insurance separate from property and casualty entirely: Openly, Universal Property, American Modern, Assurity Life and TransAmerica. Openly and Universal Property are appointments the agency turns to for homeowners risks that need a closer look than a standard national carrier gives them: an older home, a manufactured home, a higher-value property. Assurity Life and TransAmerica sit alongside the property and casualty book for individual life insurance, a separate line entirely from auto or home coverage but one the agency writes for the same customers.