Life insurance careers · No experience needed
You do not need a degree, a background in sales, or a connection in the industry. You need a state license, a process that works, and someone who will actually teach it to you. We handle all three.
Who this is for
Final expense and life insurance is a real profession with real clients, real underwriting, and real consequences for doing it badly. The people who do well here tend to look like this.
Hourly work, a salary that moves 3% a year, a schedule someone else owns. Commission is a different trade: more risk, no ceiling, and the raise is a decision you make rather than one you wait for.
This business rewards two things above all: showing up every day, and doing it the way you were taught. Sales experience helps. It is not required, and plenty of our best agents came from trades, restaurants, trucking, and the military.
A licensed agent with their own contracts owns their book and their renewals. That is the part most people never hear about, and it is the part that matters in year three.
The path
Nothing here is a secret and none of it is complicated. It is just specific, and most people quit because nobody ever laid it out for them in order.
01
A short form. Someone from the agency calls you, answers your questions, and makes sure this is actually a fit before you spend a dollar.
02
An online course you do at your own pace. Our partner discount brings it down to about $50 in most states. We send you the exact enrollment steps the moment you apply.
03
You book it at a testing center or online through your state's provider. Most people study one to three weeks. We tell you what to focus on.
04
We handle the appointment paperwork with the carriers and get you writing numbers. This is the step people trying to do it alone get stuck on for months.
05
Live training, a scripted process that works, a mentor who has actually done it, and leads to call from day one.
The industry
An IMO, short for independent marketing organization, sits between insurance carriers and independent agents. Carriers are good at underwriting policies and paying claims. They are not built to recruit, license, train, and support thousands of individual agents, so they delegate that to IMOs and pay them out of the commission.
The practical difference for you: a captive agent sells one company's products at whatever rate that company sets. An independent agent contracted through an IMO can place a client with whichever carrier will actually approve them at the best price, which matters enormously with the health conditions our clients bring us.
The full explanation, including how you get paid| Captive agent | Independent through an IMO | |
|---|---|---|
| Products you can sell | One company's | Many carriers, chosen per client |
| Who owns the client | The company | You |
| Renewals if you leave | Usually forfeited | Follow your contracts |
| Commission level | Set by the company | Contract level that can be raised |
| Employment | Often W-2 with a quota | 1099 independent contractor |
| Declined client | No sale | Move them to a carrier that accepts them |
Why a Lions Ascent agency
Most new agents do not fail because they picked the wrong carrier. They fail because nobody taught them, nobody gave them anyone to call, and nobody noticed when they went quiet in week three.
Daily live calls, a scripted sales process, call reviews on your own recordings, and certification courses you actually complete before you get in front of a client.
You will not be told to write your grandmother. Our agencies run real lead programs (direct mail, inbound calls, live transfers, and digital), so new agents have someone to talk to on their first day.
You are appointed directly with the carriers. Your writing numbers, your book, your renewals. If you ever leave, we release you, and that is written down, not a promise made on a call.
Every agent gets the Lions Ascent CRM: dialer, lead management, call recordings, quoting, underwriting guides, carrier library, and your own production dashboard.
You are assigned to an agency and a specific person who is responsible for your first 90 days, not dropped into a group chat with 400 people in it.
When you are ready, you can build and lead your own team inside the same structure, with the same tools. Several of our agency owners started exactly where you are.
Straight talk
If you have looked at this industry before, you have been shown a screenshot of somebody's commission statement. Here is the rest of it, so you can make an actual decision.
There is no salary, no hourly, no draw. You are a 1099 independent contractor. If you need a guaranteed paycheck in 30 days, this is the wrong move right now, and we will tell you that on the phone.
The course, the exam, the fingerprints, and the state application are yours. All in it is usually a few hundred dollars and it varies by state. Nobody here makes money on your course fee.
You are learning a product, a process, and a new way to work at the same time. The agents who make it are the ones who follow the schedule for 90 days before they decide whether it works.
Carriers advance a portion of the first year up front. If the client cancels early, that advance comes back off your account. Writing business that stays on the books is the whole game.
None of that is meant to talk you out of it. It is meant to make sure that when you start, you start with your eyes open, which is, not coincidentally, the same way we expect you to treat a client.
The network
Lions Ascent is a group of independent agencies that share one platform, one training standard, and one carrier shelf. When you apply, you are matched to the agency that fits where you live and how you want to work.
Independent agencies
Each one its own business, with its own leadership and its own culture.
Shared platform
Every agent in every agency works out of the same CRM, dialer, and training stack.
Carrier shelf
The same vetted carriers, so your ability to place a client never depends on which agency you joined.
We do not publish the roster for you to pick from, because choosing an agency by a name on a website is choosing by the wrong thing. What decides your first year is who is responsible for training you.
How the network works, and how you get matchedNext step
Tell us a little about yourself. We will walk you through the license, then get you trained and contracted.