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Team brokerage firms are sub-organizations that operate within larger brokerage firms, enabling large retail or wholesale firms to organize their operations into smaller, manageable units. Teams provide organizational flexibility while maintaining consistent fee structures and product access controls through their parent firms. Unlike wholesale and retail firms that can operate independently, teams must always be linked to a parent brokerage firm. This hierarchical structure allows insurance organizations to create internal divisions, regional teams, or specialized units while maintaining centralized control over product distribution and commission structures. It should be used to create access scope to forbid visibility between teams’ operations.

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Example use-case

A retail firm wants to ensure that their brokers cannot see each other’s customers and policies. Teams can be created within a retail firm with a broker in each one. This creates access scope boundaries that prevent visibility between teams’ operations. This structure demonstrates concrete access scopes:
  • Wholesale Firm has full access to all portfolios across all teams. Wholesale admins can see and manage all policies and customers in Portfolio A, B, C and D. They have complete oversight of the entire distribution network.
  • Broker A (Team 1) can see and manage Portfolio A only. They cannot access Portfolio B, C or D. When downloading reports, Broker A receives data containing only the 50 policies from Portfolio A.
  • Admins at the retail level have full visibility and can see and modify all policies across all portfolios. They can download comprehensive reports that include all policies across all teams.
This access scope model enables retail firms to maintain data isolation between teams while preserving centralized oversight and management capabilities at both the retail and wholesale firm levels.

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What Are Team Brokerage Firms?

Team brokerage firms represent organizational subdivisions within larger brokerage firms. They enable large insurance distribution organizations to structure their operations into smaller teams while maintaining business relationships and operational controls through the parent firm. Key Characteristics:
  • Always linked to a parent firm: Teams cannot exist independently and must be created under a wholesale or retail brokerage firm
  • Inherit product access: Teams can only distribute products that their parent retail firm has approved
  • Inherit fee structures: Teams use the same brokerage fee configuration as their parent retail firm
  • Organizational flexibility: Teams can be nested (team under team) to create multi-level organizational structures
  • Independent operations: Each team can have its own brokers and manage its own policies while operating under the parent’s constraints

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Team Configuration

Team brokerage firms are a tenant-level feature that must be explicitly enabled. When enabled, insurance carriers can create team structures within their brokerage firm network.

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Parent Firm Requirement

Teams must always be created with a parent brokerage firm. This requirement is enforced at creation—attempting to create a team without a parent firm will result in an error. The parent can be either a wholesale or retail brokerage firm, providing flexibility in organizational structure.

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Team Nesting

Teams can be nested to create hierarchical organizational structures. A team can be created under another team, allowing for multi-level organizational divisions. The system includes depth protection to prevent infinite nesting and detect potential circular relationships in the organizational structure.

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Fee Inheritance

Team brokerage firms inherit their brokerage fee structure from their parent retail firm. This ensures consistency in commission rates and fee calculations across the organizational hierarchy.

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How Fee Inheritance Works

When a policy is created under a team brokerage firm, the system computes brokerage fees by:
  1. Identifying the team’s parent: The system locates the parent retail firm of the team
  2. Using parent fee configuration: The team uses the same fee limits, ranges, and default values as the parent retail firm
  3. Applying fees to team policies: The computed fees are assigned to the team, maintaining the same commission structure as the parent
This inheritance ensures that teams operate with the same financial parameters as their parent firm, maintaining consistency in commission structures across the organization.

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Fee Computation Example

If a retail firm has configured brokerage fees with:
  • Minimum commission: 5%
  • Maximum commission: 10%
  • Default commission: 6%
A team created under this retail firm will use these exact same fee parameters when computing commissions for policies sold by brokers within the team. The team cannot have different fee structures—it always inherits from the parent retail firm.

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Distribution Request Restrictions

Team brokerage firms have restricted product access based on their parent firm’s approved products. Teams cannot request access to products that their parent retail firm does not have access to.

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Product Access Rules

Teams can only request products that their parent retail firm has approved: When a team creates a distribution request for an insurance product, the system verifies that the parent retail firm has an approved distribution request for that same product. If the parent firm does not have approved access to the product, the team’s distribution request will be rejected. This restriction ensures that teams operate within the scope of products their parent firm is authorized to distribute, maintaining organizational control over product access.

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Distribution Request Workflow for Teams

  1. Parent firm approval required: The parent retail firm must first have an approved distribution request for the product
  2. Team creates request: The team can then create its own distribution request for the same product
  3. Request starts as pending: Team distribution requests begin in pending status and must be approved through the standard approval process
  4. Approval grants access: Once approved, the team can distribute the product to customers through its brokers

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Example Scenario

A retail firm has approved distribution requests for Product A and Product B. A team under this retail firm can create distribution requests for Product A and Product B, but cannot request Product C (which the parent does not have access to). If the team attempts to request Product C, the system will reject the request with an error indicating that the product is not approved for the parent firm.

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Team Hierarchy

Team brokerage firms can be organized in hierarchical structures, allowing for flexible organizational design within insurance distribution networks.

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Hierarchy Structure

Teams can be created under:
  • Wholesale firms: Teams can be created directly under wholesale firms
  • Retail firms: Teams can be created under retail firms
  • Other teams: Teams can be nested under other teams, creating multi-level organizational structures

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Hierarchy Example

Teams can be organized in various hierarchical structures. The following diagram shows an example of a complex organizational structure with teams at different levels:

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Key Differences from Retail Firms

While teams share similarities with retail firms, there are important distinctions: Teams:
  • Must have a parent brokerage firm
  • Inherit fee structures from parent retail firm
  • Can only request products the parent has approved
  • Cannot have independent fee configurations
Retail Firms:
  • Can operate independently or under wholesale firms
  • Configure their own brokerage fee structures
  • Request product access directly from insurance carriers
  • Have full control over their fee parameters
These differences ensure that teams remain organizational subdivisions rather than independent distribution entities, maintaining the hierarchical structure and centralized controls of the parent firm.