Insights

Playbooks by arrangement type

What to do differently depending on which of the ten types you are running. One page per type would be repetition; the differences are narrower than that.

Placing a financial product inside somebody else's flow

The partner owns the customer and the moment. Your job is to be invisible and to not break their checkout. Negotiate for placement, not for branding. Measure attach rate at the point of decision, because that is the only number the partner will care about at renewal.

Supplying capability to another financial company

Your partner is technical and will integrate once. The contract that matters is the one covering what happens when your service degrades. Measure support cost per partner, because that is what decides whether the tenth partner is profitable.

Listing on a platform you do not control

The platform can change its surface at any time and will not consult you. Assume the listing is temporary, keep a direct relationship with the customers it brings, and measure whether you are still surfaced rather than whether you are still listed.

Selling under the partner's brand

You are invisible to the end customer by design, which means the partner owns every complaint and every renewal conversation. Price for the support you will carry without the brand credit you will not get.

Access to a defined membership

An association endorsement reaches a known population once. Treat it as a launch, not a channel, and plan for the second year when the novelty is gone and the membership has already decided.

Buying a capability for your own use

Not a distribution arrangement at all, and the most common thing announced as one. If what you buy stays inside your company, you have a supplier. Nothing in the playbooks above applies.

Each type is defined in the taxonomy, with the boundary cases that decide which one an arrangement is.