Client First Certified
For agencies

Free. No tiers, no placement fees, no upsell to be listed.

Get your agency Client First Certified

A public credential for independent agencies that sell protection first and document their work. Roughly an hour of your time, reviewed by a person, and free at every step.

Start an application
A framed Client First certificate on the wall of an independent agency, beside the owner's other framed licences.

The process

What the process looks like

  1. 1

    Apply

    About 15 minutes

    Tell us about the agency — where you are licensed, what you write, how long you have been going, and where your process currently breaks. Save and come back if you need to.

  2. 2

    We check the agency is real

    Usually 2–3 business days

    Automated checks pull your Google Business Profile, validate the address, confirm your website resolves, and look for a registered entity in your state. A person then reads the result and adjudicates anything that is not clean.

  3. 3

    A person reviews and approves

    15–30 minutes of a reviewer's time

    No certification is ever issued automatically. If something does not add up we ask you rather than declining quietly. Most reviewers will want to actually talk to you — that is the point, not an obstacle.

  4. 4

    Course and knowledge check

    22 minutes of reading, then 10 questions

    Five short lessons covering the coverage floor, declination letters, ethical selling, and claims advocacy. Retake the check as many times as you need — it is there to make sure the standards are understood, not to catch you out.

  5. 5

    Sign the standards

    5 minutes

    You sign the exact text published on this site, and we store a snapshot of what you signed. If the standards change later, your record shows the version you agreed to.

  6. 6

    Your profile goes live

    Immediately

    You get a public profile, a certificate number anyone can verify, and badge assets for your own website. Certification runs for a year and is re-verified annually.

The commitment

What you are agreeing to

8 practice standards and 7 ethical standards. Most good agencies already do all of it — certification is about documenting that you do.

Practice standards

  • No state-minimum limits by default
  • Written declination letters
  • Full coverage review at quote
  • Replacement cost, not market value
  • UM/UIM matched to liability
  • Exposures disclosed even when not sold
  • Documented annual review
  • Claims advocacy
Read them in full →

Ethical standards

  • Client-first recommendations
  • No misleading rate quoting
  • Transparent fees and compensation
  • Licensing and appointment compliance
  • Client data privacy
  • Honest reviews
  • Truthful advertising of certification
Read them in full →

Preparation

The course

5 lessons, 22 minutes of reading. Written by people who have worked in agencies, not by a compliance department.

  1. What Client First Means

    The promise behind the badge and what it obligates you to do on every quote.

    4 min

  2. The Coverage Floor: Why State Minimums Fail Clients

    Why minimum limits are a liability for the client and the agency, and what the floor is.

    5 min

  3. Declination Letters: How and When

    The single documentation habit that protects your client, your agency, and your E&O.

    5 min

  4. Ethical Selling and Disclosure

    Commission neutrality, honest quoting, fee transparency and data privacy.

    4 min

  5. Claims Advocacy and the Annual Review

    What happens after the sale is where certification is actually earned.

    4 min

Questions

Questions agencies ask

How much does certification cost? +

Nothing. There is no application fee, no annual fee, no listing fee and no paid tier. Certification is free and the directory is not monetised through agencies — the businesses behind Client First sell services to agencies who want them, and that is a separate conversation you are free to never have.

Can I pay for better placement? +

No. There is no mechanism to buy ranking, and the editorial 'Editor's pick' flag is never granted in exchange for payment or services. If that changed, the central claim this directory makes would become false, so it will not change.

What would stop my agency being certified? +

No verifiable business registration, an address that resolves to a mailbox service rather than an office, no Google Business Profile or a profile marked permanently closed, a website that does not resolve, lapsed errors and omissions coverage, or a disciplinary record with your state department of insurance. If we are unsure, we ask rather than decline.

Do I have to be licensed in every state I list? +

Yes, and it matters more than agencies expect. Your profile only appears on location pages for states where you hold a licence — an agency fifteen minutes from a state line does not show up across it unless it is licensed there. That protects you as much as the consumer.

What happens if I stop meeting the standards? +

Certification can be suspended or revoked, and both are recorded. Errors and omissions coverage lapsing suspends a listing automatically. Substantiated complaints, a licensing action, or a demonstrated pattern of ignoring the standards go to a person, who decides with a written reason.

What do you do with the information in my application? +

We use it to review the application and to build your profile. Operational details you share — your management system, your team size, where your process breaks — help us understand the agency and are not sold or passed to third parties.

Reading for agency owners

Ready to start?

The application saves as you go, so you can start now and finish later. There is no payment step at any point.

Apply for certification