Ascensus Reviews

Pros

Ascensus is a great place to work if you are not afraid of hard work and it's important to you to believe in the services your employer provides to its clients. Ascensus cares about helping people save for retirement, helping employers offer robust retirement plans and helping our partners create a success product.

Cons

The retirement industry has many regulations defined by the DOL and IRS. This makes the business very complex and ongoing training is required. Add in the various partners that Ascensus supports and it makes for a challenging environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Townhalls are great but spending even more time out on the floor in the various locations would be beneficial to the associates.

Pros

If you just graduated or have been within the company for a while then you are ok. However, if you are trying to switch jobs then I would not recommend it. There are no managers, all associates report to Directors and VPs. It is a very diversified place and there is a good relationship between co-workers and directors. The pay is decent and talking with most associates everybody seems happy with what they are getting. There is a lot of overtime so I guess this will benefit hourly employees rather than salaried employees. Work hours are really flexible! you get lots of time off, there is a lot of training and you can easily transfer to another department if you dont like where you are

Cons

Very process oriented in everything. Lots of weekly meetings and discussions that sometimes are pointless. Some managers are in their roles simply because the length of time they have been with the Company. Promotion seems to be based on seniority instead of merit.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve your training department, computers are really slow in this area. Your traininig people need to worry about getting to the point rather than worrying about being friendly or not.

Pros

Great flexibility, very good perspectives for professional growth and good mentoring programs
The best training and knowledge network available to professionals in the pension industry
Good benefits and lots of vacations
Directors and VPs are all great people. If you negotiate your salary you will get it

Cons

There are no considerable downsides at Ascensus. Work hours are long during busy season, however that is expected in any company. Overtime is paid at 1.5 your hourly rate. The only thing I disliked was the weekly 1x1 meeting with your manager. Terrible waste of time. It should be done only once a month

Advice to Senior Management

If you would raise our salaries you would keep more employees. The problem is that you guys wait for us to give you our two week notice to offer us a 10% increase when we have already accepted a better offer somewhere else. Remember, human capital is the best asset your company has

Pros

There are very few.. Some very good people work there but that is all I can really say that is positive.

Cons

Most people there have been promoted into position that do not have any experience. There is no vision. IT systems are the most convoluded and just are a mess. There is zero methodology or SOPs everything is the wild west. Full on panic mode all the time. The pay is some of the lowest in the market. Also most people have been there so long Ascensus is all they know.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-evaluate your Sr Management. Bring in some real talent and get rid of all the old baggage. Your security is weak and there is zero vision.

Pros

Good time off policy, Nice people work there

Cons

Bad benefits, Executive team has core values but does not live by them. The values are interpreted for the "flavor of the month". Promotions are given only to the favorite employees. Employees are not able to post for jobs are they are filled by the favorites. IT department is lacking and therefore client service and operations are required to do much exception processing manually. if you make a mistake, you are in trouble.

Advice to Senior Management

A shakeup is needed, the same executive team has been in place for many years. Usually, you will see EVP, SVP levels moving out to run their own companies or further their careers. This does not happen at Ascensus. The exec leadership is stagnent.

Pros

Lots and lots of vacation days
good healthcare benefits
good people

Cons

Low, low pay
lots of long term employees (with most managers there since the reagon administration, new ideas and ways of doing things are unheard of)
many managers and associates are underqualified, leaving the bulk or the work (and the stress) or the smarter, more qualified
loooooooooooooow pay

Advice to Senior Management

'the bobs' needs to take a visit here, cut deadweight employees and management, kick older mgt who regard the PC as witchcraft or that really complicated oversized music player

Pros

The pay is decent. It's so bad here that they have to pay people more just to stay here.

Cons

The place is a confusing maze of bureaucracy. Formerly known as Bisys, this company has multiple levels of managers competing with each other for preference. Most people have multiple direct managers with no clear outline of responsibilities. Communication is broken throughout the company as bickering, gossip, and sabotage have removed trust from most interactions. Also, much of the company technology is really out of date with some of the programs we use going back to 1997. There have been multiple attempts to update the technology but the red-tape bureaucratic approval process has left us with half-usable programs and a bunch of work-arounds.

Advice to Senior Management

Scrap the entire management structure and restart from scratch.

Pros

positive work environment and supportive management

Cons

departmental silos and lack of communication and coordination among departmentals

Advice to Senior Management

review of employee competencies to see if current pay received is merited