Art accurately describes the insurance process.  The broker is a
service provider whose job is to get the best quote from the available
insurance companies.  To avoid confusion, no insurance company will
quote to more than one broker for a particular policy.  You should
therefore pick your broker based on who you think you work well with and
who you think does a professional job of getting quotes and otherwise
servicing your account (the latter more important than the former
because any competent broker will get the same quotes from the same
insurance companies.

In 2000, when I was building my Legacy, I was insured (kit) with AVEMCO
and was all set to just change that to a flying policy.  Unfortunately
in the middle of all this, AVEMCO decided that they would no longer
insure high performance experimentals.  After picking myself off the
floor, I ended up with REGAL and have been very happy with the service.
I have actually been insured with AIG the whole time although REGAL
gets, and we discuss competitive quotes every year.  My first year price
was about what Art was quoted and it went down about $1,500 after the
first year and has stayed pretty much constant since then.  My numbers
are generally comparable to Art's except that I have jet and military
time (but don't know if in made any difference.)

Just to show that there is an element of absurdity to every process, I
got my first quote from AIG and then realized that I had to add Don
Goetz to the policy so he could do my first flight.  I duly reported
this to Autumn at REGAL, who passed it on to AIG.  AIG agreed to add Don
and REDUCED the total quote by a couple hundred dollars.  I asked Autumn
if she thought I could get the price down more by adding Alan Sheppard,
Bob Hoover etc. but she didn't seem to think it would work.