Seven questions to ask an agent network before you join it

If you manage a cluster of agents, you are approached often. The pitch rarely varies: strong commissions, a big network, reliable technology. None of that is checkable, and all of it is claimed by everyone.

Here is what we would ask in your position. Some of these are uncomfortable for us to publish, which is roughly the point.

The questions

1. Under what licence position do your agents transact, and can I see it?
2. What is your current data-protection certification, and when does it expire?
3. When an agent has a failed transaction at 4pm on a Saturday, what specifically happens?
4. How long does a settlement dispute take to resolve, measured and not estimated?
5. What share of your locations could serve a customer right now?
6. What happens to my cluster’s relationship if I leave?
7. Who at your organisation is accountable to me by name, and how do I reach them?

Why these seven

Each one is answerable with a document, a number or a name. None of them can be satisfied with an adjective. A network that answers the first two by sending you paperwork is behaving correctly. A network that answers them by describing itself as trusted and compliant has told you it cannot answer them.

Question five is the hardest and the most revealing, because it is the one nobody volunteers. Agent count flatters everyone; the share of locations that could actually serve a customer at a given hour does not.

On what an aggregator is buying

Not commissions. Commissions are visible, comparable and quickly matched by whoever wants your cluster next. What is not easily matched is the compliance position your agents operate under, and the certainty that when something breaks at the counter, someone answers.

Your agents experience your judgement, not ours. That is the actual product being sold to you.