September 2026
"No fees" is the most effective phrase in this sector and it answers only one line of a calculation with four. Here is the whole thing.
The four components
1. Direct fees. Joining fee, monthly or annual dues, technology charges, conditional fees triggered by events. Easy to compare because they are numbers.
2. The commission differential. If a network takes a share of commission, that is a cost, and on a real book it usually dwarfs the fees. Three points of commission on $2,000,000 of premium at a 13% blended rate is about $7,800 a year. A $300 monthly fee is $3,600. The no-fee arrangement can easily be the expensive one.
3. Contingency treatment. Does group contingency reach you, and on what basis? A network that improves your contingency is returning value that offsets the other two lines. One that retains it entirely is charging you in a third place.
4. Switching and exit costs. Moving systems, rebranding, re-training staff, and whatever leaving costs later. Rarely quantified, frequently the largest number on the page.
Model it on your own premium
Take your written premium and your blended commission rate. For each arrangement you are comparing, work out:
- annual fees, all in
- commission given up, in dollars rather than points
- expected contingency, conservatively
- one-off costs of joining
Then the other side of the ledger, which is the part people skip because it is harder:
- premium you can write that you currently cannot place
- commission uplift on business you already write
- contingency you could not reach alone
If the second list does not clearly exceed the first, the arrangement does not pay for itself, however good the meeting was.
The cost of no access at all
The comparison that gets skipped entirely. Every risk you cannot place is revenue you did not earn, and it is worse than that: it is a client who now knows somebody else can help them, and who will call that person first next time.
Most agencies have never counted this. For one quarter, log every account you could not quote and what the premium would have been. The number is usually larger than any fee under discussion, and it is the only figure that tells you whether market access is a cost or an investment.
What to be skeptical of
- Any projection built on best-case contingency. Ask for three years of history instead.
- "Access to 100+ carriers" when four of them write your line in your state.
- Savings claims with no arithmetic attached. Ask to see the calculation. It is a fair question and the reaction is informative.
Book Check does the uplift side of this calculation on your numbers and labels every rate it assumes, including the ones that are still provisional. Our terms are where the cost side gets published.
Related reading