When we approve membership and instructor licensing, we can only formally endorse styles and grades where we have clear, acceptable proof of grade. This protects you, your students and any attached insurance, and helps maintain public confidence in your credentials.
In most cases the process is very straight forward. Where we have questions or concerns about a style or grade, we will usually contact you during the application to clarify things and to check you are comfortable with any proposed changes. However, this is not always possible and sometimes doing so would delay your membership going live. In those cases we will use our discretion to approve what we can clearly verify and to adjust your endorsed list accordingly.
This may mean a small reallocation of endorsed disciplines or the removal of grades that we cannot yet verify. For example, if you apply for Shotokan Karate, Wado Ryu Karate and Self Defence, but the only evidence supplied is a third Dan Shotokan Karate certificate, we cannot specifically endorse Wado Ryu by name. In this instance we may endorse Shotokan Karate alone, or we may choose to endorse Karate more generically. This gives you technical scope to shape your syllabus while avoiding any suggestion that we have formally recognised a style for which we do not hold clear evidence of grade.
Another example would be a very broad, closely related list of striking disciplines. If you request Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Fitness Kickboxing, Freestyle Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts, and the primary evidence supplied is fight footage under our black belt equivalency process, we may attribute this to Mixed Martial Arts as the principal technical base. If you also provide a recognised grade in Kickboxing, we may condense the various Kickboxing sub disciplines into a single endorsement such as Kickboxing or Freestyle Kickboxing. This offers broad cover for any attached insurance and allows you to evolve your pedagogy, while avoiding unnecessary fragmentation or misclassification of your style.
When your membership goes live, you should always review the styles and grades shown as endorsed or insured. If you believe something has been misallocated, if a key discipline appears to be missing, or if you have additional evidence that may help our compliance team refine your endorsed list, please contact us and we will be happy to review it.
There is no charge for adjusting endorsed and insured styles during the life of your membership, subject to suitable evidence being provided where needed. In practice this means that, on occasion, we may activate your membership with a more limited set of styles than you originally requested, so that you are covered and operational without unnecessary delay. You can then add to or refine your endorsed disciplines at any point, once further evidence has been supplied and verified.