Financial services companies rely on several types of financial professionals for personal selling, including nonaffiliated agents, affiliated agents, salaried sales representatives, and multi-line agents (MLAs). One true statement about these financial professionals is that nonaffiliated agents are not allowed to place a substantial amount of business with one insurance company affiliated agents enter into sales agreements with multiple financial services companies to distribute their products salaried sales representatives are independent sales representatives who do not have specific obligations to sell any one company's products MLAs have the ability to offer a larger number of products to customers than do career agents, and many customers prefer to use one agent to meet all of their insurance needs.