Vantaggi
Good place to build your career in financial services because of the training, structure, pay, and benefits. Good brand recognition from customers, but this can turn into a negative if you lack humility. Most reps are not as good as you think. The green machine is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but those who are good at building value and relationships can transfer those skills to an RIA and do really well.
Svantaggi
- Although micro-management is mentioned in almost every review, I think it stems from not trusting your veteran representatives. Fidelity feels like they have to control people from the top, having branch managers regurgitate sentiments from the top. This also leads to *bleep* rolling downhill. Some managers did prove themselves as good salespeople, but eventually have to drink the Kool-Aid or they won't last long. Either that or they give up because they can't change the system. Other managers were opportunists who rose through the ranks quickly, moving fast enough before people can realize they aren't as good as they appeared. - Compensation: Yes, you can make very good money here, but if you're really good, you can make way more outside. Compensation is figured out ahead of time and they reverse-engineer the compensation plan to get AE's back to target comp. The last couple of years, they've reduced some of the pay, like basis points on new flows, coinciding with the S&P at historical highs. Oddly enough, they had a reduction in force in 2009 because they based payroll on the S&P and had to cut people. So when the market's down, you're screwed, and when the market's up, you're also screwed. Ultimately, you can't keep lying about AE/SAEs being in relationship roles when your compensation is still based on selling products. And this relationship model is 5 years old.