Best Firm to start a Financial Advisory Practice
Pros
- Best training on the street - bar none. You are trained on all aspects of being a financial advisor.....products & accounts (insurance, investments, annuities, employee benefits), strategies (general financial planning, business planning, retirement/ estate planning), sales skills (telephone, presentation, referral asking skills), practice management (time management, delegation). Training is delivered 1x1, group settings, via virtual courses, sometimes offsite conferences. - Compensation. I worked at a previous firm where you got about 20% of every $1 of revenue generated. At AXA you get anywhere from 50%-90%, with the big producers getting in the 90% area. Plus have a great stock purchase plan called SharePlan. - Great marketing materials. Available for just about any prospect or situation. All are AXa branded. - Out of the box ready marketing. Seminars, mailers, letters, campaigns, marketing strategies....all are pre-approved and ready to go. No need to design a marketing strategy yourself. - Depth of products. You can be a one stop shop for any prospect/client. No account or household minimums. Some insurance firms allow you to do investments, BUT only after selling insurance for 3+ years, or maybe they only allow mutual funds (from maybe 30 mutual fund families). At AXA you can work with investment clients from the start and work just about all mutual fund families. Also have employee benefits for businesses as well. Only loans and property/casualty insurance are not offered. - Technology - AXA has embraced technology more so than other financial service companies, but the industry as a whole is still behind the curve on technology use.
Cons
- The industry itself is extremely difficult. The easy part is the accounts / strategies. The hard part is the sales skills and practice management. Most people that fail never grasp that. You have to work the hardest on what you probably don't want to work on at all: prospecting and marketing. - You pay for everything, which is a tradeoff for having the best compensation package. The good news is your costs are generally fixed whereas your income can go up. When you are new much of the cost is picked up by AXA, but eventually you do pay for everything. - The commission structure is not straightforward. It takes a while to get used to, its like a different language. Once you get it your fine.
