More Guest Commentary: How to Improve the Bail Industry

The following is guest commentary submitted by Tim Bruce, a licensed General Agent from the Springfield area.

Reality Check

As I have been reading every ones comments and suggestions, it amazes me at just how many agents and General agents contradict themselves. The old (Pot calling the kettle black). From financing and no money down bonds to offering rebates, many of the ones complaining are some of the very ones doing just that.

We would all agree that something needs to be done if we are interested in the long term stability of our industry, but we cannot and will not truly stand together to effectively do something to help ourselves. The only Association I was once a member of was only in place for a few members to try and back door and sneak legislation through that would only benefit them and Insurance Companies. Had it not been for Angela Parks and a few others who were keeping track of what was going on, legislation could have passed and none of us would have known anything about it until it was too late.

To try and organize all the Agents statewide is a very commendable and hopeful thought. I assure you though that it will never happen. (Example> Each and every County and each and every Judge in this state does things differently and by their own rule) Procedures are done differently according to the interpretation of rules by each individual Judge, Prosecutor, Sheriff and even the Bail Bond Agents.

Several years ago, myself and many of the local agents in my area got together and jointly and adamantly decided to raise our minimum fees, addressed discounting and financing fees, and raised all failure to appear bonds to 20%. That very afternoon, two agents walked across the street to the jail and one wrote a bond by discount and the other by financing with low down and low weekly payments.

If you cannot even get the local agents in your prospective area to agree and cooperate, then how do you even remotetly think you can organize agents and companies statewide?
As much as I hate the Government even slightly getting involved in my business, unless the rules of policy and proceedure are point blank and enforced, you will never get the agents and companies to comply.

I remember what it was like being a brand new agent. I starved to death for the first 16 months. Now with many Counties implementing the catch and release policy and the mass R.O.R. policies by allot of Courts it is even hard for exsiting agents to make a living. To make matters even worse for those agents many Generals chose to impliment what I call the Ice theory flooding the state with multiple agents. This works out great for the General as he/she makes 50% of every agent. Unfortunately for the agent many Generals put multiple agents in the same area and not only does the agent have to compete with other companies, they also have to compete with thier own company. I do not believe in stacking agents. I would rather have an agent make a good living and write quality bonds, than to have high volume profits on questionable and high risk bonds. (make sense?)

In my opinion, If the General Agent puts an agent in situations where he/she is struggling to make a living. The responsibility of the agents business ethics, proceedures and questionalbe bond writing should fall on the General that allows it. If as a General, you cannot control the proceedures followed by your agent, you simply get ride of them. If you as a General allow the agent to premium write, finance, undercut and conduct themselves in the manner in which you allow. Then by all means, do not complain about the down fall of this industry and do not put all the blame on your agents. As a General, if you are into high volume bonds rather than quality. If you put pressure on your agents to write more bonds,then accept the concequenses that comes with the added stress to your agents.

If you truly want to change this industry for the better and you truly want to have each and every agent and General Agent on the same page, then unfortunately you are going to have to have someone put in place rules and regulations that forces all to follow. Les Hogue seems to be an honorable man, and from speaking with him, it seems he truly wants to clean this industry up.

Why would it be such an impossible task to maybe sit down with Les Hogue, the Dept. of Insurance,and whomever the new director turns out to be and impliment policy and proceedures to enforce many of the laws already on the books to work towards cleaning this industry up? I am not an advocate putting anyone out of work or preventing anyone from going to work, but in order to change anything for the better it is the General Agents who have to get on board and clean up thier own house before they can tell anyone else how to conduct business. If everyone had to follow the same RULES then there would be no questions.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Thomas and many others have very good points of interest but putting them all in a blog, or sitting around talking about it does absolutely nothing to change things. If you manage to get all the Generals to come together in some sort of Independant Association and actually agree on how to change things for the better, please call me, as I would be one of your biggest advocates and allie.

If I have a tire that keeps going flat and all I do is keep putting air in it. eventually it will blow out doing unknown damage. Our Industry is just that. Unil we actually fix it, eventually it will blow out and all of us will suffer.

Thanks for reading
Tim Bruce
General Agent.