Vantaggi
Great clients, great products, great co-workers, a lot of resources. Initial salary for the first year is fair. Plenty of time off. Training is above what most companies provide.
Svantaggi
Responsibilities increase, sales goals increases, number of clients increase, expectations increase, and stress increase. Life work balance decrease, and resources decrease. One support staff is assigned to multiple advisors. Administrative Assistants do very little to help the advisor. Administrative staff can not do paperwork, can not answer any questions for clients and are constantly being utilized by management for pet projects that do not contribute to the bottom line. Everything is measured and analyzed. From how many meetings you had to how many calls you made, to what products you presented, to how long it took to close the sale. These metrics are then shared with you at your 1 on 1 with your manager. 1 on 1's are the least productive or inspiring meetings held. Depending on your manager, it is common for everything to be negative. Rarely are sales wins celebrated, and if you are lucky to be mentioned during the weekly sales call. Be prepared to give a book report on how you achieved the sale. Daily calls are held to help hone your questioning ability. As a WMA your job is to ask the client a series of questions. You are not allowed to provide any advice, and are limited on what you may say to a client. You can ask as many questions as you want, but they have to follow a certain sequence and you may only use certain words at certain times. They call this CSP. Micromanagement is an understatement. Client interactions are evaluated through observations, and survey's and are highly subjective. Annual goals seem to be assigned arbitrarily. It is not uncommon for your annual goal to increase by 70% the following year. Goals are the same across the board for a certain training class. Regardless of your region or what your production was the following year. Management does not have a defined role, and seems to be redundant from the director and managing director. Overall this company does not seem to know where it is headed. Does it want to be an RIA or Wirehouse? Is it an insurance and annuity company or a comprehensive financial planning company? Given the inability for their advisors to actually advise the client or provide more then a handful of products. Then the argument could be made that it is just an insurance company masquerading around as an investment company. The mutual funds have won several awards and are very competitive expense wise, but then again so are other companies. This may not be a the best career choice for experienced advisors. If you are established and are currently making more than 100k a year then I would suggest staying where you are. If you would like to be micromanaged, have someone sit in on your meetings with clients, and critique every word you said. Measure every mundane daily activity and assign some number or percentage to it. Have eight different people ask you about the status of sale, and have to report to eight different people on a daily basis. Then you will thrive here.