Direct appointment or sub-code: why the difference decides everything

This is the single most useful distinction in understanding agency networks, and it is almost never explained on a network's website. Two agencies can both say they have access to the same carrier and be in completely different positions.

Direct appointment

The carrier appoints your agency, in your name, with your own code. You are the agent of record. The carrier knows you, audits you, and pays you.

If you leave the network, the appointment is yours, subject to the carrier's own rules and whatever your network agreement says about it. Your contingency history, your loss ratio record and your standing with that carrier are yours.

This is the strongest arrangement and the hardest to get, which is precisely why agencies join networks.

Sub-code under the network's appointment

The carrier appoints the network. You write under the network's code, usually with a sub-code identifying your agency. The carrier's relationship of record is with the network.

This is how most networks deliver most of their access and there is nothing wrong with it. It gets you into markets you could not reach alone, often quickly, sometimes without meeting the production requirement a direct appointment would demand.

What matters is what happens at the end, and there are three possible answers:

The carrier converts you to a direct appointment if you now meet their criteria.
You move the business to another market at renewal, which means re-marketing every account.
The business stays where it is and you do not.

Which one applies is a function of the carrier's rules and your network agreement together. Ask about both.

Why networks do not lead with this

Partly because it is complicated, and partly because "access to over 100 carriers" is a better headline than "twelve direct and the rest through our code". The second sentence is more useful and less impressive.

It also varies carrier by carrier inside a single network, so there is no clean summary to put on a page. That is a real reason, and it is also why you have to ask about your specific carriers rather than in general.

What to ask

For each carrier I care about: direct or sub-code?
For the sub-codes, what does the carrier require to convert me to direct, and has that happened for other members?
If I leave, what happens to each one?
Whose contingency history is it? If the group earns contingency on business I wrote, how is my contribution counted?
Who holds the E and O exposure, and whose name is on the policy the client receives?

How to read the answer

A network that gives you a carrier-by-carrier answer without hesitating has thought about this and expects to be asked. A network that keeps returning to the total number of carriers is answering a different question.

Neither arrangement is disqualifying. A mix is normal and sensible. What you are testing is whether you can find out.

How we describe market access sets out the four arrangements and what each one means.