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The difference of approach has historical factors behind it. Old-established companies that have had a branch network for decades and have built up relationships with many professional people who are part-time agents have a very strong position in this area because the agent has come to know the types of policy the company offers and the service it can provide. A new company cannot hope to compete here, and in any case building up branch offices is an enormous expense. Newer companies therefore have little choice but to aim directly at the public through their own salesmen and newspaper advertising - as several of the unit-linked companies have done - or to offer the full-time insurance broker such a high standard of service and advice that he is enabled to sell more of their policies.
Companies which sell largely through part-time agents vary widely in their attitudes to selection. The "granting of an agency", the empowering of an individual to sell a company's policies, is not legally restricted and a company may select whom it likes. Some companies are far less demanding about qualifications and experience than others, and, while some will generally restrict themselves to people with professional qualifications, others will allow the local garage owner to have an agency if he reckons he can sell policies. Clearly the composite companies are more likely to grant agencies including critical illness insurance to those who specialise in certain types of general insurance and who are not necessarily at all qualified to sell life insurance.
One reason for this, in some respects unsatisfactory, situation is that a company is in law not liable for the actions of its agents. Though the company grants the agency, the agent, when acting as an agent, is held to be acting for the proposer and not the company. Thus if an agent, in filling out a proposal form, makes an error that results in loss to the policyholder, he makes that error as the policyholder's and not the company's representative, and the policyholder would have no legal claim against the company.
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