Pros
Making friends. However, you can do that anywhere.
Cons
5% retention rate Financial Advisor (Former Employee) - Southwest Region - August 8, 2019 Working for Thrivent is VERY competitive and not the good kind. You study for your exams and dream of the unlimited possibilities of endless earning potential. They send you to their home office for a week of nonstop training from breakfast to bedtime. They teach you NOTHING about giving financial advice. You heard that right, nothing, The week of training is all sales training. Practicing scripts. You have to figure out the advice part on your own (IE: giving half of your sales to whoever sits in the meeting with you, even though you're brand new and need the money to start your business. See how this starts?), and it is complicated when they push you to only sell Thrivent products. They have sales goals and put you up against everybody in your RFO(your region) and email everyone your sales numbers out in a huge Excel spreadsheet every week so that you can compare how you're doing to everyone else and feel terrible that so many people are doing better than you. How you learn to "give advice"..I use that term loosely because that is another Thrivent word for selling (hence the sales training), is by working with other advisors and giving them half of your sales to the people who are higher up the pyramid. It is the only way to "learn". This is a legal Pyramid scheme, with a system designed by and for the people at the top to benefit greatly from the high turnover of advisors who promise to bring in all of their friends and family to become Thrivent customers. The sale is split between you and whoever's running the meeting with you, then your supervisor gets a cut, then the head of your RFO gets a cut, and I assume someone above him gets some kind of cut too. Sounds a little like a pyramid right? Let's revisit the title of the review one more time. 5% retention rate. That's what they tell you to make you think that you can be special and can make that 5 percent. It almost sounds like a fun challenge. That is a very glass half full way of looking at it. How about I rephrase it to "95% chance of losing a significant amount of your money before owing Thrivent so much money from their fees that you have no choice but to leave." They have retreats to make you feel motivated and basically teach tips and tricks to get people to buy things from you. The new hire Financial Advisors are broken into years of experience: year one, year two, and year three. Year one, the advisors fill a giant conference room, there are so many people there. Still excited knowing that they're not making money yet but that soon they will be. Fast forward to year two, the room is much smaller, with people who are still hopeful that things will turn around. Fast forward to year three. A small room of 6 people. Nobody else could afford to work for Thrivent. I made it to that room that third year, not because I was better than any of those who quit but that I am not the kind of person to give up on something I've worked so hard for. I wish I had never worked for this company and given so much time and money for no financial gain. This is a legal pyramid scheme and a sales job, plain and simple. If that is what you want, then Thrivent is for you. One positive of working for Thrivent is the community because you make friends, etc.. However, you can make friends anywhere. Don't let them take money from all of your friends and family. If anyone from Thrivent is reading this, I implore you to pay your new advisors some kind of living wage.