Pros
- You make your own hours. - Commissions are competitive, assuming you sell what they want you to sell. - Compensation grid is fairly straight forward. - Minimum production hurdles can be significantly lower than a wire house, especially after the first year.
Cons
- Firm practically forces you to sell their house funds, and highly encourages you to put your clients in a MAP account, the firm's only fee-based product available to Classic advisors. - Cannot move from Classic advisor platform until you reach $200K rolling T-12; at least I think. That number seems to change and there never seems to be a set policy. - Advisors are charged for trading in non-proprietary funds. - Practically all communications with the home office concerning your employment must be filtered through your local manager. Disagreement with your local manager? Too bad. There's no avenue to escalate it to the next level. - Management uses the private contractor relationship to their advantage. You are a private contractor, but you are treated like a W-2 employee when it is to their advantage. Yet you never receive any benefits that a W-2 employee would enjoy. - Technology is laughable. No live streaming quotes. No in-house research. You can't enter your own trades. Everything is done on paper and faxed. It's like you've traveled back to 1987. They do offer some products from outside vendors for financial planning, investment planning, and contact management. However, as a Classic advisor, you are charged a significant monthly fee for these. - District managers and Managing Principals are more concerned with recruiting new advisors instead of helping current advisors. This is due to the way they are evaluated and compensated. - There are many levels of highly compensated managers, and I haven't really been able to figure out what most of them do. They certainly aren't going to bat for the advisors. - Classic advisors can only earn commissions for mutual funds, insurance products, or financial planning fees. No commissions are paid on stocks,ETFs, or bond trades. - The company's flagship product, MAP, is not competitive in the marketplace. This is the only fee-based account you are allowed to use as a Classic advisor. - It seems there is more scrutiny from compliance regarding trading in non-proprietary funds vs house funds. - Processing business can be a nightmare. - Outside wholesalers are not allowed on the premises.