Pros
Excellent training 2 or 3 times a week, office space (but you pay for it), one on one training with a manager, company provided leads and CRM
Cons
Bankers Life keeps half your commissions for all medicare advantage, life, long term care, and annuities. Contract rates are more than twice as high when you're independent. They make you pay $150/month to work there for office space and marketing materials. You do all the marketing, cold calling yourself. Company provided leads are terrible (mostly wrong numbers or recycled leads). My branch manager would make fun of agents, even telling me when I quit that I "would just be another struggling agent" when I went independent. Agents never own their book of business. The manager that trained me would yell at me for asking questions, often times in public. He also was condescending while saying ridiculous things like there is no such thing as deflation and BRICS nations is just a conspiracy theory. He also made fun of me many times to other agents about things I was seeking to understand with insurance. Also when I met an older agent around the office he would them that I never used him as a financial advisor