Pros
One of the strongest life products (term and whole), the best long term care product. Very competitive annuities and securities investment products. Exceptional company history and ratings. Ability to pick and choose your clients and working hours. As a captive agent (first 3 years), you are a W2 employee, and you get some decent group health insurance. The commission rates aren't as high as most places, but your renewal stream down the road will beat it, plus the stability of the company offers better retention of clientele over the years. It's a 99.9999% chance you will never have to apologize to your clients for how the company handles its finances. It's a lot of hard work up front, but down the road it pays off very well.
Cons
For your first three years, understand you are there to serve management, despite them telling you the opposite. Their salaries are quite substantial and it's all numbers driven based on new hires. Management cannot earn commissions, like most other insurance companies. Thus, most of their time is spent recruiting and interviewing new hires. (One day in class, they forced all 12 of us new agents to give at least two names of people they can call for hiring). The guy who recruited me was gone within my first contracted month. He told us in training one day "I'm not going to throw you against the wall like flies to see who will stick." But that's exactly what they do. The bottom line is you need to know what you're doing before you walk in the door. Get a mentor, and find one or two established agents to work with. My established agent often complained about management because they were always throwing carrots at him that he thought conflicted with the interest of his clients. Have about two years worth of income saved before working there, and use some of that money to buy leads to get your numbers up during the slow months.
