tied agent

But, as they have discovered over the past year, tied agents can be expensive and difficult groups of people to do business with.

Tied agents have made an arrangement with an insurance company to only recommend their products.

Independence - solicitors may not be tied agents or appointed representatives of, for example, a life assurance company.

That insurer has 1,500 appointed representatives and another 1,000 tied agents pushing its policies.

But the regulators already have tough powers, as one tied agent of Norwich Union discovered last year.

Instead some became tied agents.

Allianz products are distributed principally through a network of full-time tied agents.

Fearful that sources of business were drying up, they rushed to do deals with tied agents - 20,000 firms materialised almost overnight.

Most of the high street banks and the top 10 building societies are tied agents, and so can sell only one brand of insurance policy.

They usually operate as tied agents and sell exclusively the products manufactured by the bank's in-house insurance company or its third-party provider(s).

Rhodesian-born Reynolds had operated as a financial services tied agent for Guardian Royal Exchange until February 1991.

Some 'boiler rooms' are not licensed but may be 'tied agents' of a brokerage house which itself is licensed or not.

Mike Abrahams, chief enforcement officer at Lautro and the man most involved in regulating tied agents, is dismayed by life companies' attitudes.

The survey also found that two-thirds of the customers surveyed did not understand the Financial Services Act distinction between a tied agent and an independent financial adviser.

A tied agent, working exclusively with one insurer, represents the insurance company from whom the policyholder buys (while a free agent sales policies of various insurance companies).

If they became tied agents they were authorised to do business through the life office which took them on; the life office, in turn, was responsible for their conduct.

Yet PICC Group, as a state-owned enterprise, was initially barred from developing its own network of branch offices and tied agents.

On February 1 Stephen Wright, an Equity & Law tied agent, stood in the dock of Gloucester Crown Court.

You can either deal directly with an insurance company through one of its tied agents or you can deal with an independent intermediary [a broker or agent].

Today the company continues to offer a wide range of products and, in addition to its direct sales service and brokerage agreements with numerous tied agents and independent financial advisers.

Australia has a similar system of tied agents and independent advisers, and the TPC has no doubt about the usefulness to the consumer of universal remuneration disclosure.

Tied agents normally come under the Life Assurance and Unit Trust Regulatory Association (LAUTRO).

Between 2003 and 2004 Massow was Director of another financial adviser firm, this time a tied agent of the Zurich Advice Network (previously Allied Dunbar).

For example, amendments relating to the tied agent that were designed to find a solution to ease the adaptation of legislation in those countries in which there is currently no regulation in this field.

'As far as we are concerned I would refute that charge;' says Michael Auld, spokesman for Guardian Royal Exchange, which has had its share of problems with tied agents.