Our building, up to 2 years ago, used to pay commissions to the strata manager
We have a very good and responsible insurance broker, who also was not comfortable with paying a commission. We negotiated a brokerage fee with the broker that excluded any commission to the strata manager.
As we all know, commissions are used to disguise low strata management fees. Discussion between the committee and the strata manager ensued (as we were otherwise satisfied with the services we were getting) and in return for the strata manager not taking any commissions they got an uplift in their management fee at the last renewal.
I think all around this was a very satisfactory result (the strata manager is not a member of SCA BTW)
I am also associated with two other building (being properties owned by my daughters) and these strata managers do not take any commissions , and have never done so.
As a contrast, one of these buildings was managed by a large strata management group (whom I cannot name but are well known) and of course they were taking commissions. That was until their contract was not renewed.