Animator and navmesh component on a parent of an FBX

I'm building a global prefab for a NPC container. I want it to be a parent for every NPC, so I can update/add/modify general components of all NPCs in one place and just customize some variables for specific npcs instead of updating all components for every single npc every time. I would like to be able to add different FBXs (with skeleton, skinned meshes etc. , one body per NPC) under the parent object. I'm using mecanim and humanoid rigs for animation.

I've noticed that when the scale of my FBX object (not scale factor) is different than 1 and animator component is attached to parent instead of the FBX, it will move the whole object in a weird way (root motion is applied and the origin is moving like crazy). Looks like setting my FBX object scale (not scale factor) to 1 works fine.

I just want to be sure that everything would be fine with the animations and movement if I have an animator component and navmesh agent on the parent object instead of the actual fbx object. Is it possible? Would this work that way?

It would look like this in the hierarchy:

--NPC_Container (global prefab, all general components like animator, navmesh agent etc. here)

----fbx object

Thanks in advance.