RIBO does not recognize licensed brokerage employees as “independent contractors”

A licensed individual at a brokerage cannot be an “independent contractor,” Ontario’s broker regulator, Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario (RIBO), said in its Summer 2010 bulletin.”On occasion, RIBO staff has been advised that a licensed individual within a brokerage is an ‘independent contractor,'” RIBO president Al Chamney notes in his president’s message. “RIBO does not recognize the concept of independent contractors.”The bulletin notes that no matter how the brokerage is structured, or how the brokerage chooses to identify its licensed individuals, “the principal broker should treat every RIBO licensed individual as employees, subject to the same overall plan of supervision.”