Northwestern Mutual reviews

I was a in the Financial rep/advisor role for 4 years (so I didn't just fail out after one year and I'm complaining now).. When you accept a role as a financial rep/advisor, you are agreeing to become a business owner. You MUST remember that. To be a successful business owner, you must be profitable! The way to be profitable in this role (and still do the right thing for the client) is to be working with high net worth individuals / high income earners / established families. Your market matters SO MUCH. If you move laterally in mid/low levels of income (even if you are generating A LOT of new clientele), you WILL fail out. It's just math... and unfortunately so many people buy into the "Granum" system of just doing an insane activity and getting referrals to everyone with a pulse, they forget how they actually make money. Granted, a lot of activity does matter, but you make money by doing transactions with those who can actually afford to do larger amounts of planning. The model of NM is very old school. The "Granum" activity model is pushed as if there is no way you can possibly fail if you do Granum. The issue is that model was specifically for selling one product - Life Insurance. Nowadays, a financial rep/advisor at NM is expected to do FULL PLANNING - insurance, investments, retirement, etc. Which although is a good shift for the company, without a background in financial planning it is simply TOO MUCH INFORMATION for any brand new person to comprehend in just a few months. I don't think they have acknowledged that really... AND the amount of extra work you have to do that you get paid very little on (brokerage accounts, Roth IRAs, etc.)... it's so time consuming! Again - If you do not see high income earners and established families, you simply won't make money. I can't stress that enough. You CAN make a lot of money in this role and have a ton of flexibility in your career. I see it around me. With that said, the industry is changing and NM is slow to adapt. The success rate to even make it past your first 2 years is less than 20% .. and making it to your 4 or 5 year mark is like 10%.. and actually making it past that and MAKING MONEY (because many make it to 4 or 5 years but are broke / in debt), is probably 5% or less. Understand what you're signing up for... if you have a great market, or are willing to focus on creating a great market, AND you put in the activity, you can have success. With that said, I would not recommend this to any friends or family because of the extremely high likelihood of failure and losing money.

Financial Rep business is very tough - only one in ten make it to five years. You eat what you kill and get paid on commission. You need to have a lot of self-motivation to make it. Home Office is a giant bureaucratic mess. It works well if you just want to keep your head down and punch the clock, but if you have career aspirations, be prepared for politics, brown nosing and back stabbing.