Pros
I met some good people almost all have moved on to better jobs.
Cons
Want to be an Advisor say no to this company, they send you an invoice after you leave. I am a 22 year veteran in the industry, I worked for this firm for 16 months the last 4-5 seeking a new situation. If you want to learn the business not here, if you have experience, do it anywhere but here. I produced, followed the rules, was promised management within 6 months with the kind of resume I had I was told that management would be an absolute in 6 months. The old bait and switch occurred, I got there and I produced as asked and exceeded the expectation, when I asked when would l I be moving to a managers role they changed the criteria and rules. I continued to produce and expand my practice. I trained every new person because the managers hire and abandon people, they have a ridiculous recruitment goal and no real incentive to develop their hires. I am mentoring/training people and continued producing very well. Despite the company mantra. “life pays the bills” meaning life insurance I was working on some life insurance and annuity cases but a lot of investment business which takes about 10 times longer to get done because they are not and will never be investment oriented as a firm. They only put in a CRM in 2016 because the DOL ruling forced their hand, they put in the most rudimentary version of Salesforce in place and expected all of us to stop production to enter clients, they could have hired data entry people for this at $12 an hour. This company has more ways to prevent you from doing business such as endless mandatory meetings, requests for data entry, endless training's in which they bring in someone who pontificates for 75 minutes and has not produced in years. Managers that are doing unscrupulous replacement of life insurance policies to produce commission for their hires and then they just stop that faucet flow after a few cases and leave them to call upon over worked brutalized clients that have had 5 Advisors in 3 years. Or they have them calling friends and family to buy insurance. Most of the managers that I met had so many issues/complaints on FINRA Broker Check you should never let them see your clients some even had assault and sexual assault reported on the criminal section of their FINRA File. Now here is the fun part, I decide I cannot work in the environment and I decide to leave, I am still producing because I have to get paid (this is all commission), I finally give notice and have smartly planned to have only $2800 left in my draw account. I am told that I would have to wait FOURTEEN WEEKS after my last day to receive my final paycheck. I am not happy but I wait, well 15 weeks go by and I call payroll to be told that I misunderstood, I will get a letter that is mailed after FOURTEEN WEEKS telling me what my paycheck would be and then I will get it on the next payroll date. I wait and the letter arrives 16 weeks after my last day. AND…. It tells me I owe Prudential $1958.22. There is a redacted statement explaining the inflow and charge backs for any advanced payment on commission that I had after I left the company. Funny thing is not one thing matched the spreadsheet that I produced for myself before I gave notice, not even close to the numbers I had, I called payroll and asked them if I sent them a blank piece of paper and it said, “send me $1958.22” would they send me a check? They said no, of course not, I asked them why they expected anyone to do just that? I had to ask four times for them to give me a deeper explanation and you would think they were giving me the launch codes for the nuclear arsenal. The information was still not enough to understand how I owed them money. I tried to reason with them and then I get a call from a law firm in Arizona trying to collect on me. So, my legal coverage at my new job is not fighting them for me, they also had to ask 7 times to get the contract they were reading because nowhere in the contract that I had did this little nugget appear and we still can’t find it because they refuse to send the document. So how do I owe them money and how did this happen? These slick managers call the clients tell them they have to see them, tell they that you left and they need new paper work signed. They get the cases assigned to… you guessed it some new hire that needs the commission to fulfill their obligation to get hired on contract. How do I know this? Someone that I am friends with in my old office was told this by a new hire who got other peoples cases. In my entire working life of over 35 years I have never ever been asked to pay for the privilege of working for a company. Especially a company that does not give me a paycheck, it is all commission, there is no expense reimbursement so all your gasoline, tolls and wear and tear on your car is your bill to carry. You can write it off however, you know that will never recoup all of the out of pocket. The benefits are so-so and expensive. In year two they throw you into a 1099 contract, you are entitled to benefits, 401(k) and they pay FICA but you are responsible for your own taxes. I saw 75-year-old agents still working there because they could not retire. Just the other day one of the young people that I mentored called me, he received a $300 invoice in the mail for his short 9 month stay at Prudential. They troll the internet, college campuses and job fairs, do not fall in the trap or you will go broke and owe them money in the end.