Reference
Broker or advisor: how does the way they are paid change the advice?
The short answer
Most firms advising on PEO and ASO are compensated by the provider that wins the business. BRG is one of them. A smaller number charge the employer a fee instead. Both can be competent and honest, and both carry a tilt: the vendor-paid firm earns nothing if you stay put, and the fee-paid firm bills you whether or not the outcome improves. The questions worth asking are what it costs you to find out, who sets the fee, and what the person in front of you loses if you decide to do nothing.
This is not an accusation
Plenty of brokers give excellent advice, know their market deeply, and place clients where they genuinely belong. The point is not that vendor compensation produces dishonesty. It is that it produces a systematic tilt, and a tilt operating across thousands of recommendations is worth understanding even where every individual actor is acting in good faith. We are describing our own model here as much as anyone else’s.
Where the tilt actually shows
Not usually in which provider is recommended. Fee levels across a comparison set are often similar enough that the choice between them is made on merit. The tilt shows in whether a transaction happens at all.
An employer who is already buying well, whose administration is running acceptably, and whose real problem is a staffing gap rather than a structural one, is an employer for whom the correct recommendation is to change nothing. That recommendation pays a vendor-compensated firm nothing. It is a hard thing to arrive at consistently under those conditions, and any firm that tells you otherwise is asking you to take its character on trust.
The second tilt: toward the bigger transaction
Where compensation scales with what you spend, the incentive favors the larger arrangement over the smaller one. A PEO relationship generates more than an ASO relationship. A full platform replacement generates more than fixing an integration. Both of the smaller answers are frequently correct, and both are structurally disadvantaged. This one applies to us, and we have no structural answer to it — only the RFP, which puts the comparison in your hands rather than ours.
What the employer-paid model buys, and what it does not
It buys indifference to the outcome. A firm whose fee does not vary with your decision has no economic stake in whether you move, and that is a real advantage worth paying for.
It does not buy superior knowledge. A well-established broker may know a market far better than an advisor who charges you directly. It also carries a cost the other model does not: you pay for the evaluation whether or not it finds anything, which is why some employers never run one.
How BRG is paid, plainly
You are never invoiced. Not for the guidance, not for the market research, not for running the RFP, and not if the process runs longer than anyone expected. We are compensated by the provider that wins your business, after that process — the same way a PEO pays its own sales team. If nothing we put in front of you meets your objectives, we are not compensated in any manner.
One feature of this is worth stating because it is unusual: the fee is determined by your decision-making team rather than agreed privately between us and the provider. That does not make us disinterested. It does mean the number is visible to the people making the decision instead of buried in what you pay afterwards.
What to ask, whichever you are talking to
How are you paid on this specific engagement — not the policy in general, the transaction on the table. Does your compensation vary by which provider I choose. What would it cost you if I decided to do nothing. And: tell me about the last client you advised to stay where they were, and what happened to your fee.
Those four questions have simple answers or evasive ones, and both outcomes are informative. Ask them of us as readily as of anyone else. Our answer to the third is that it costs us the entire fee.
| Vendor-paid (including BRG) | Employer-paid fee | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid by | The provider that wins | You |
| Cost to you at the point of engagement | None | A visible fee |
| Incentive if the answer is “do nothing” | Earns nothing | Indifferent |
| Incentive on transaction size | Larger is better | Neutral |
| Cost if the evaluation finds nothing | None | Paid anyway |
| Best used for | Running a market process at no cost | Deciding without any tilt |
Common questions
Is the compensation disclosed?
Is a vendor-paid firm cheaper, since the provider pays?
How is BRG paid?
Where this sits
This page supports PEO / ASO Advisory — the practice that does this work.
