Thrivent reviews

Benefits: The benefits are poor. Medical and dental plans are the worse I have ever had in my career. My dentist reminds me every visit how bad my insurance is. Their 401K contribution is great but only if you produce well. Income: Unlimited income if you have 20+ appointments a week. They talk like everyone should have 20+ appointments a week when in reality the average is about 3-4 appointments a week. The cost of running your practice has been increasing over the years. Over the last four years, the compensation has been lowered slowly, while expenses have been increasing slowly. I feel we are getting nickle and dimed for everything now. They have changed the compensation plan 3 times in the last 4 years!!! Lot's of benefits have been removed. Lots of reimbursements have been removed too. Now, they make FRs pay for the marketing brochures whereas a few years ago, we didn't pay for it. I believe these changes were strategic and happened slowly so that the work force wouldn't know what hit them. The universal life business for Thrivent appears to be of particular problems with low interest rate environment. Shifting of expenses and lowering of compensation appears to be a solution that has been implemented over last 4 years to increase bottom line. Products: High emphasis on life insurance and annuities. That's how management gets paid and thats what they want you to sell. Training: The partner's are usually washed out FR's that couldn't make it in their practice. Partners have high turn-over rate just as do the FR's. I have seen my region bring in 5 new partners in the last few years and all those partners ended up becoming FR's because they couldn't recruit enough new hires. These partners that became FR's turned out to be terrible producers too, and most quit. That shows you how the training is. Interview: The interview process is rather easy. They will hire anyone. Each month, they send about 50-60 new hires to headquarters for one week of training. My group was of 50 new hires was four years ago. Of the 50, I think about 6 are still with the company. That shows you the turn-over rate.

- Lacking in sufficient training. As a new advisor, you get one week (5 business days) in MN, and then they release you into the wild and follow up with some online/video training. Not very good imo. Can also depend on your managing partner, and if they help invest time in your and your practice. I haven't seen many good ones. They're a dime a dozen and they come and go, leaving you hanging. I wouldn't place much faith in them because in the end, they only look out for themselves. - You have to have a sufficient amount of capital to get started. You have to pay for everything (office space, supplies, assistant if you need one, etc.). The company does pay for some things, but you have to reach certain quotas. So if you don't reach those quotas, you're sinking more and more of your money into your practice that may not be showing results. - If you're not surrounded by either affluent people, or are deeply involved in the Lutheran community, or have a strong network of Christian individuals....building a successful practice is extremely hard. Thrivent started out as a faith based organization of Lutherans, so they're well known in that community. They just opened up their doors to all denominations recently, but most churches and their communities are wary of Thrivent. If your network is of either low-mid net worth individuals, or a non church community, look else where. - They say you get "paid training for 8 weeks", but $15/hour doesn't account for much these days.