Life and Annuity Distributor Starts Agent Rights Petition

The agent lock-in issue: Distributors may have valid reasons to lock agents in when they have paid for an agent’s training or agents want to switch distributors frequently, Blake said.

But he argued that, when distributors try to retain agents in an unfair way, the agents have no practical way to appeal.

“One agent was left hanging with a client’s check for weeks, unable to get a response from his FMO to write a contract,” Blake says on the petition website.

Annuity.com provides a pre-release form when agents affiliate with it, and many other distributors are quick to release agents who want to leave, Blake said.

Distributor lock-in problems have cropped up frequently over the past 30 years but seem to be occurring more often now, according to Bill Broich, the founder and previous owner of Annuity.com.

“There are also some terrific FMOs who allow movement in an efficient manner,” Broich said in an email. “The ones that don’t are usually medium or small FMOs, and, more often than not, they are angry at an agent trying to better themselves.”

Credit: Adobe Stock