A lot of independent insurance agency owners don’t think they need someone keeping a close eye on their financials. The agency itself is growing, bills are getting paid, and revenue looks good on paper, so everything looks right. But when we sit down to discuss their financials, there’s this pause.

They’re not sure where their largest sources of revenue are, and they’re not sure why they’re increasing. They are just happy it’s increasing. It’s not a failure, but it’s a signal that we might need to be keeping a closer eye on the agency’s financials.

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The Difference Between a Fractional CFO and a Bookkeeper

I get asked a lot, “We already have a bookkeeper. Isn’t that enough?”.

Your bookkeeper or staff accountant handles the daily work. They’re handling things like paying vendors, applying commissions, and making sure the transactions are logged correctly. These tasks are important for the agency to run, but in a strategy session, they’re only helpful to look back on, not look forward.

As a CFO, I take that information and ask: What’s it telling us?

• Are your financials accurate?
• What’s coming in, what’s going out, and why?
• Where do you have room to invest?
• Is it time to grow your team, or time to pause?
• Can your cash flow support your next hire?

The questions and inferences in the numbers are where the difference is. Bookkeepers and staff accountants track the past. CFOs, or Fractional CFO’s help you plan the future.

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What Independent Insurance Agencies Might Be Missing in Financials

There are some common blind spots I see in most agencies before they bring in CFO support. The biggest one is that they keep doing what’s worked before, even when it’s no longer working.

Agency owners think, “Well, this got us here,” and assume it’ll keep working. But what got you to one million in revenue won’t necessarily get you to five.

With all the systems spitting out data these days, it gets overwhelming. There’s so much

information that agency owners don’t even know what to pay attention to. So, they revert to what’s familiar or just stop looking at the data altogether. This is when things can get really messy.

I’ve worked with incredible agency owners who are great at what they do, but that doesn’t always mean they have a natural feel for the financial side. When that piece feels intimidating or unclear, it’s easy to avoid it, but ignoring it won’t make it go away.

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Why Fractional CFOs Make Sense for Independent Insurance Agencies

The truth is, a full-time CFO on staff isn’t realistic for every agency. Your agency might not have the workload or the budget for that yet. That’s where an option like fractional support makes a ton of sense.

With a fractional CFO, you’re not just getting someone to look at the numbers. You’re getting someone with vast experience who’s worked with lots of agencies. Someone who’s seen what works, what doesn’t, where people get stuck, and what best practices look like in the real world.

A fractional CEO can step in and help you figure out:

• When to hire a new producer, and when to wait
• Whether your systems are set up to scale
• If your revenue growth is predictable, whether your team and processes are built to support your success

We help you plan based on where you’re going, not just where you are.

And maybe most importantly, we’re objective. We’re not tied to the day-to-day politics or trying to tell you what you want to hear. We're here to tell you what’s really going on so you can make decisions with your eyes wide open.

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What Changes When You Start Making Data-Driven Decisions

Once agency owners start working with one of our CFO clients, I see a real mindset shift.

Before we start working together, or even in the first and second months, they’re often just looking for someone to confirm a decision they’d already made. Like, “Just tell me it’s okay to move forward with this thing I already want to do.”

But once they understand their numbers, they start asking different questions:

• What if we do option A?
• What if we don’t do it at all?
• What does it mean if we wait six months?
• What’s the impact on cash, on staffing, on profitability?

That shift from seeking validation to seeking clarity is where growth really happens.

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If You’re Not Ready Yet, Here’s What You Can Do

If you’re not quite ready to bring in a CFO, that’s okay. But don’t wait until you're drowning in

complexity to get your financial house in order.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Surround yourself with strong support. A solid bookkeeper, a good operations manager, or someone to take things off your plate so you can think more strategically.
• Clean up your processes. If your data is inaccurate or inconsistent, you can’t trust it. And if you can’t trust it, you’ll never act on it.
• Identify someone in your organization with a financial mindset who can start helping you pay closer attention.

And when the time comes, you’ll be in a much better position to bring in a CFO because you’ve built the foundation for strategic financial management.

At the end of the day, everything in your agency, sales, service, and operations, shows up in the numbers. That means the CFO sees it all. And we’re trained to ask not just what happened, but why it happened and what we do next.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and start growing with confidence, that’s where a CFO can make all the difference