Business-Category-Exclusivity

Purpose: To ensure members who offer products/services that are a primary part of their offerings have the opportunity to be the exclusive member in a chapter to talk about that product/service.

Scope: To be applied to all members.

Responsible Persons: Chapter President to enforce; members to follow the policy.

Policy: Members who offer a product/service that is their primary offering(s) contributing to the majority of their income can hold business-category-exclusivity in up to two business categories with Corporate membership. The business category(s) prospective member wishes to occupy must be representative of their primary business function(s). A maximum of two business categories is given to Corporate Members only. 

Two different businesses could both offer the same product/service, but if it is not their primary source of income in their business, then they would not be allowed business-category-exclusivity for those products/services that are not their primary source of income. Here is an example to clarify.

• A personal lines property casualty insurance agent may be able to offer life insurance and a financial planner may be able to offer life insurance. If the financial advisor views their life insurance offering as a primary source of their income, then they can pay to exclusively represent the financial advisor and life insurance business categories by paying for Corporate membership. In this example, the insurance agent could not talk about life insurance in their commercials. If the financial advisor does not pay for Corporate membership, then they only get one business category and in this example, the insurance agent and the financial advisor could both talk about life insurance.

Additionally, an agent of a company must be the person representing the business category for which they seek exclusivity.

• A personal lines property/casualty insurance agent works for an agency that can also sell commercial lines property/casualty, but she herself does not sell the commercial lines, then she cannot have business-category-exclusivity for commercial lines; she could only have business-category-exclusivity for personal lines.

Sometimes an individual may have two different businesses that are unrelated to each other. A chapter membership is for one business only. To have two separate businesses and occupy two unrelated business categories, the individual would have to pay for a membership for both businesses. The only discount would be there would be only one registration fee, and if the business owner wanted to sign up for Premium for one of the businesses, they could still have the same benefits for their second business in that chapter and sign the second business up as Basic. If both the businesses need two business categories each, then both memberships have to be Corporate memberships.