Why buy through an agent or broker

You can buy insurance straight from a company. Going through a licensed agent or broker gets you cover chosen across the market rather than one insurer's shelf, someone whose job is to argue your side, and a claim pushed by people the insurers deal with every working day. Insunation lists the licensed ones county by county, so you can check who you are dealing with before you buy.

Look up Agent/Broker What we check

Pick a county and you will see everyone listed there, with the county and town its holder gave us and the licence number we checked. If you hold a licence, register it to be listed.

What an agent or broker does for you

Four things you do not get from buying straight from a company.

A choice, not a shelf

A broker is licensed to act for you and can place your risk with whichever company will carry it. An agent carries the insurers they are appointed to. Either way you are comparing a market rather than taking what one company happens to sell.

Someone on your side

Questions, mid-term changes, a risk the company does not want, a claim it is reluctant to pay — all of it goes through them, in writing, against the same insurer. Their living is repeat business, so a policy that goes wrong is their problem too.

Claims that move faster

This is the one you notice when things go wrong. Insurers and their claims teams deal with agents and brokers every working day, and a claim raised through one is worked ahead of a claim that arrives from an individual policyholder. That pace is not a favour — it is a relationship they already have.

Licensed, and answerable

Agents and brokers are licensed by the Insurance Regulatory Authority, and a complaint about one goes to the Authority rather than into a call queue. That licence is what we check against the published register before a listing appears here.

These are the advantages of dealing with somebody regulated, not a promise about any one firm. Insunation is a directory: nothing is bought or claimed here, and we do not employ the agents and brokers listed.

On the current register

The licences the IRA has published, as imported. A listing appears here only once its holder has claimed it and we have checked the claim.

Individual agents

9,801

licensed in their own name

Agencies

4,872

firms licensed by name

Brokerages

238

firms acting for the buyer

Licences in total

14,911

on the current lists

Look up Agent/Broker

The directory is grouped by county, and a county fills up as holders claim their licences and we check the documents.

How a listing gets in

Three things stand between a licence number and a published listing.

The licence is claimed

The number is matched against the current lists, and matched to a licence that is still active. A licence someone else has already published cannot be claimed twice.

The paperwork follows

Agents show a national ID or passport and the certificate of business registration or incorporation. Brokerages show the principal's ID and the CR-12 showing who owns the firm.

Someone decides

A member of staff compares what is claimed with what the register says and what the documents show, then accepts or refuses it. Every decision is recorded against a named account.

What we check, and what we take as given

We check the licence number, its status and the holder's name against the lists the IRA publishes, and we look at the documents. The county, town, phone number and website on a listing are given to us by the holder and are not part of any licensing record — the IRA lists carry no addresses. Insunation is a directory only: no policy is sold here and no claim is handled here.

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