Wister Insurance® is Accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
Wister Insurance® is accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
For a company that asks short-term rental managers to trust us with their liability exposure, that means something, and we want to explain what this accreditation involves rather than just putting a seal in the footer and moving on.
What is the Better Business Bureau (BBB)?
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1912, created in response to a wave of misleading advertising that consumers had no practical way to verify or challenge. More than a century later, the core function is the same: give buyers an independent place to check how a company actually behaves before handing over money.
It is worth being clear about what the BBB is not. It is not a government agency. It has no regulatory authority, it cannot fine anyone, and it cannot revoke a license. Insurance agencies are regulated by state departments of insurance, and that is a separate and mandatory layer that every legitimate agency has to satisfy.
What the BBB does instead is maintain public profiles on businesses. Anyone can look up a company and see how long it has operated, what complaints have been filed, and, more revealingly, whether the business responded to them and how. Complaints and responses sit side by side on the record. A company that answers a hard complaint directly looks very different from one that ignored it, and both are visible to anyone who checks.
The BBB also grants accreditation to businesses that apply and meet its standards. Accreditation is voluntary. A company chooses to submit for review, and plenty of legitimate businesses never bother, which is why the absence of accreditation is not a red flag on its own. Its presence tells you a business opted into outside scrutiny it was not required to accept.
That is the useful frame for anyone evaluating an insurance company. Licensing tells you an agency is permitted to sell you a policy. Accreditation tells you something about how it conducts itself while doing so. Neither replaces the other, and neither tells you whether the policy itself is any good.
BBB Accreditation Requirements
BBB accreditation is not a purchase. Businesses apply and are reviewed before the BBB grants it, and the standard is ongoing rather than one time.
Accredited businesses commit to the BBB Standards for Trust, which cover:
Honest advertising. Marketing claims have to be truthful and substantiated. For an insurance agency, that means not implying coverage a policy does not actually provide.
Transparent business practices. Terms, pricing structure, and what a customer is buying have to be clear before the sale.
Responsiveness to complaints. Customer concerns brought through the BBB have to be addressed, and both the complaint and our response are public.
Safeguarding privacy. Customer information collected during quoting and underwriting has to be protected.
Accreditation can also be revoked. A business that stops meeting the standards loses it, which is what makes it worth having in the first place.
Why We Pursued BBB Accreditation
Most of the property managers who find us are buying specialty insurance for the first time, often on a deadline. An owner contract requires proof of coverage. A new client wants a certificate before signing. They search, and they find a handful of agency names they have never heard of, including ours.
That is a hard position to buy from. You are being asked to hand over property schedules, revenue figures, and premium dollars to a company you learned about twenty minutes ago, for a product whose value only becomes visible on the worst day of your business.
We can tell you we operate honestly. Every agency says that. Accreditation means an outside organization reviewed how we advertise, how we sell, and how we handle complaints, and reached its own conclusion. You do not have to take only our word for it, which is the entire point.
What BBB Accreditation Does and Doesn’t
It is worth being precise here, because insurance has two separate trust questions that get conflated all the time.
Accreditation reflects on Wister Insurance as an agency: how we conduct business, advertise, and treat customers.
It does not evaluate the carrier who pays your claims. That is a separate question with a separate answer. Wister's coverage is underwritten through Lloyd's of London, which holds an AM Best A+ rating for financial strength.
You want both, and now you can verify both independently.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The Better Business Bureau is a nonprofit organization founded in 1912 that maintains public profiles on businesses, publishes customer complaints alongside the company's responses, and grants accreditation to businesses that apply and meet its Standards for Trust. It is not a government agency and has no regulatory authority. Insurance agencies are separately regulated by state departments of insurance.
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Yes. Wister Insurance is accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and commits to the BBB Standards for Trust covering honest advertising, transparent business practices, responsiveness to complaints, and customer privacy.
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No. Accreditation evaluates the business conduct of the agency. Financial strength belongs to the carrier who underwrites the policy and is rated separately by agencies such as AM Best. Wister's coverage is underwritten through Lloyd's of London, rated A+ by AM Best.
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No. Businesses apply and are reviewed against the BBB Standards for Trust before accreditation is granted, and it can be revoked if a business stops meeting them.
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Wister writes Commercial General Liability (CGL) and Professional Liability (Errors & Omissions) coverage built specifically for short-term rental managers, co-hosts, and property management companies. You can read more about who is liable when a guest is injured and the 7 costly mistakes short-term rental managers make with their coverage.
The Takeaway
If you manage short-term rentals and you are not certain what your current policy actually covers, that is worth a five minute conversation. Get in contact with Wister.
For more insights and tips for vacation rental managers and co-hosts, visit our Blog →
