Pros

Great place to start your practice
Lots of sales tools learned
Opportunities to go into management if you desire
Franchise and own your practice
breadth of products

Cons

payouts suffer in comparison to other Broker Dealers
advertising can be weak
just like most large houses, they skew towards insurance but you are able to make of it what you would like

Advice to Senior Management

Take the time to teach the advisors something about financial planning to go along with all the sales. It is a tough balance, but that education needs to be pushed outside of just getting your 7.

Pros

good benefits
transferrable skills
Interesting industries (brokerage related)

Cons

lackluster compensation
micro management
rigid procedures
inconsistencies with mid level management in policy adherence

Advice to Senior Management

compensation, compensation, COMPENSATION!!!! It does come down to dollar signs!
Attract entry level talent with the hope that they will stay... how so? Opportunities for growth and development!
Keep Middle management engaged. They need to be "refreshed" on best practices too!

Pros

They are an ethical company. They work hard to protect clients from products that are unsuitable. Independent advisors seem satisfied with the relationship.

Cons

It's a tough industry, in an even tougher environment. I found it difficult to bring in new business, even though I did everything they told me to do.

Advice to Senior Management

Virtually no prospect leads were delivered to our office from Ameriprise marketing efforts, during the two years I worked there. Offer more free training to independent advisors on ways to prepare their employees for success.

Pros

Supportive community. The people want you to succeed and perform well. The hours are also flexible.

Cons

One of the downsides of working at Ameriprise is the limited room for career advancement. It seems like most people end up lateraling to another location.

Advice to Senior Management

An advice or feedback to the leadership at Ameriprise would be to have a clearly overall vision and strategy for the organization.

Pros

There is a lot of emphasis on teaching, yes it is the rote learning of scripts but, this is a great way to begin with everyone. There is a lot of group work to ensure that you are up to task. There is a marketing budget, in our case we had money for lunches. Pretty comprehensive product platform, and their emphasis on comprehensive financial planning was great

Cons

Ethically challenged at times. Didn't follow their principles of starting with cash flow and doing true financial planning, really were only interested in the transfer of money.

Advice to Senior Management

I don't think that management is really concerned with what I have to say. If they were I would say that they have a competitive advantage when they push financial planning, but they shouldn't work at cross purposes, either they want to be financial planners, or they want to get the commissions off of insurance and money management. It's a conflict of interests to try and have it both ways.

Pros

Financial planning is a forward looking focus. It allows a competent advisor to discuss the full financial spectrum with a client, and most clients love the idea of truly knowing if they are protected and doing enough for retirement. It is an easy thing to pitch, and most people find value in knowing if they are doing the right things.

Cons

While Ameriprise boasts about its massive training effort and employee development, those things were far from true. By training, I learned how to funnel people down into VUL policies by declaring that Term never pays, Whole Life and Universal Life are archaic, and thus a VUL is the only logical choice for today's consumer. "Have you heard about it's tax benefits!?" Management was inadequate while it was there, and has now been decimated. There is no support for young advisors trying to learn and grow their business. Now they are luring bigger producers away from the wirehouses with visions of grand payouts, but the back office cannot support the ways that big producer is typically doing business. Sluggish technology, Ameriprise believes in building software not buying it. At the end of the day, this company is a battleship in a creek when the entire industry is turning. Financial planning is a great formula for success. The market needs it. This is not the place to do it.

Advice to Senior Management

Teach advisors how to competently write a financial plan for a client. New advisors don't know how to do this, and the talent that you are drawing from wirehouses doesn't know it either. If you hire pure brokers and don't teach them the value add that Ameriprise offers from a niche market standpoint, they are not going to pick it up through osmosis.

Eliminating the MFA position was a horrible mistake in a culture that is already lacking in sales support. Bring in educators to teach the art of financial planning, not just wholesalers that can sling mutual funds.

If you don't want to be a wirehouse, why are you hiring only those people, cutting off training, focusing on assets alone, and trapping people in P1 with outrageous exit costs?

Pros

Very good resources for advsiors to build their brand
Know the alpha side of the business hands down
surprisingly good resources and support
Can grow your business there
Robust platform especially with HRB Advisors aquisition
Very good executive management focused on growing the company

Cons

Constantly confused with American Express though totally separate
Will have some growing pains but will come out better
Advisors need to think bigger. New recruits in are helping this.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you're doing.

Pros

work life balance - philanthropic, fitness center
people

Cons

untimely company news release - usually read it in the local newspaper before announced at work
no pyschology screening of applicants - to eliminate disfunctional personalities/personnel problems

Advice to Senior Management

basic building structure - must attract above average workers to create a solid foundation

Pros

Unlimited income based on your hard work and abilities. Basically you are seld employed. As long as you obey the rules, there is no limit to your success.

Cons

The long hours and stress of planning fro and dealing with many people and thier money can get to you over time

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

Great place to begin a Financial Planner career. Very good sales & marketing training, along with solid technical training and skills development.

Cons

Compensation plan is geared toward rewarding advisors with an established book. So if you're new to the business, take advantage of the training, do your time and know that you will starve, unless there is spousal income or you have a stockpile of cash in reserves.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice to leadership is to pay your Field Leaders a little bit less and invest that capital in better compensation for dedicated advisors in P1 who are building a book for you. Translated: feed your people so they don't die and/or leave you for another team.