Realtors as independent contractors have a tougher time getting benefits than they would as employees, but under the General Motors umbrella, GMAC Real Estate offers extensive benefits to its associates.

GMAC Real Estate is offering health and auto insurance and financial services to its more than 1,300 franchised offices and 20,000 sales professionals in the U.S. and Canada by partnering with its sister company GMAC Insurance. Both are under the GM Financial Services division, and GMAC Insurance offers insurance and investment products specifically geared to independent contractors.

The program is called the GMAC Real Estate Investment and Insurance Services program, and officers of the company say there is nothing else like it.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to provide a wide variety of benefits and financial services comparable to those found in the corporate world to our entire sales associate workforce and their families," said John Bearden, president and CEO of GMAC Home Services, the parent company of GMAC Real Estate. "By taking advantage of the experience and established partnerships of our sister company, GMAC Insurance, we're able to provide a benefits package unlike anything else available in the real estate industry today."

Competitors such as RE/MAX International and the Cendant real estate brands also offer benefits such as health and other insurance products, but GMAC Home Services believes it is the first to offer such benefits through a sister organization rather than a strategic third-party partner. The benefit is that GMAC Real Estate had more input into the kinds of products and services brokers and agents need, and an experienced partner more willing to meet those needs with products geared for independent contractors.

Rick Gregory from GMAC Home Services helped put the program together.

"Everybody is an independent contractor that are sales associates with GMAC Home Services," says Gregory. "They are hard-working and trying to make a living, and we feel it is our responsibility to look at our strategic partners and our associates to see what we can do to help our associates. They have to make individual decisions about insurance, investing, health, disability and left to figure it out on their own, so we believe that it is our responsibility to give them the environment to be successful and part of something special."

It's not the first time GM has encountered a need to assist its independent contractors - most auto dealers want some kind of benefits package, too. In fact, some GM benefits that were first offered to auto dealers in a program called "Total Insurance Products and Services" (TIPS) are now part of the new benefits package to GMAC Real Estate sales professionals.

Gregory says that GMAC Insurance was eager to listen to input from sales associates, and a comprehensive program resulted including:

Published: January 12, 2004

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