Pros
Training program is great. The experience is transforming. Many people are sharp and some of the best in the business. NM's insurance products are some of the best in the industry.
Cons
I went into the FASTRACK training program as a career changer and had done some due diligence as to where to go to get into a career as a financial advisor. And although I got some good advice from people outside of the Northwestern Mutual bubble, nothing they told me really prepared me in the way that I wish I had been prepared. First, you must understand that NW has a duality. There is a NW "cult" like mentality which will impact each office around the country. That cult is that NM is THE BEST and that by hooking up with them you, the rep, are ELITE. But at the same time each NW office around the country has it's own personality. If you leave NM (and it is more likely than not that you will because of their business model) and if you choose to stay in the field of insurance or financial advising, be warned: If you don't stay beyond several years you will never see the residual payments that make insurance sales lucrative. I left after 18 months and went to a firm with only a loose affiliation with another insurance company. What I left behind was much of the second year and future payments that would make my "start up" phase easier. Be warned: NM's business model is very clear: they will milk you for all of your contacts and push you hard (harder than you might be able to stomach) to make sales. They will tell you the only way to land business at the start is to do "joint work" (which is pretty much true for most people) but that means giving up 50% of your commissions. The people that you do joint work with will look upon you as a cannon fodder. They pretty much know that you won't be around in a six months or a year or two and they will smile and be nice to you but most of them won't take the time to really teach you or help you learn simply because they don't want to spend time doing so. No, they will happily help you close business and reap the perpetual rewards of the business you tee up for them but very few will really do much to help you. If you ask for (which I did) a split fee other than 50% (say you ask for 60%) they will likely chuckle and flip you off. They know you have little power to negotiate because your back is against the wall because you have a quota you must meet. The biggest reason not to work for NM is that you will be asked to sign a contract. That contract you sign will pretty much lock you into selling NM product. No one will likely go out of their way to do what is best for the client and show them options from other carriers. This fundamentally irritated me as I want to do what is best for my clients. On the investments side, I did three deals with about a total of $400k of AUM. Because NM does not encourage you to work towards your FINRA licences until you've been there a while (they want you to focus on selling insurance), if you end up with a client with investments, you will not get any monetary benefit from your client (I know I personally did not get into this business to enrich the bank accounts of colleagues who don't care if you stick around.) Watch out for your joint work partners: they might be "good guys" and they're all super charming (except for me in one case a guy who really was repugnant and screwed me over by excluding me from communications and meetings with a client once he got the idea that I might not stay with the firm) but they mostly see you as meat. Have a sit down with each joint work partner before you bring business to them and make then agree, in writing, to a set of principles as to how you will work together. Otherwise you will find yourself with a client who thinks of you as bump on a log and you may very well find that your joint work partner has commandeered the relationship which you had to begin with.