Wealth Management Advisor - Wealth Management Advisor TIAA Employee Review

Everything else. You will have absolutely no automony in how you choose to interact with clients. From your very first day on the job, they will force you to learn an aggressive sales technique which is designed to use behavioral psychology to get clients to "self-realize" that they have a problem. It doesn't matter if you have been a successful advisor elsewhere, you will have to learn and show a competency in utilizing this sales approach through extensive role plays. Building strong client relationships with your clients is not valued or encouraged. You will be required to use agendas in every meeting, and will spend 75% of your day documenting all aspects of your interactions with clients in an overly complex CRM. After your meetings, you will be required to upload your agenda, complete suitability, type a 14 page client profile, enter a signed risk tolerance questionnaire, document that you delivered your advisor bio, document outside assets uncovered, upload client statements, and type comprehensive meeting notes for every interaction. If you are fortunate to bring assets into the firm, you will deal with a back office that is completely incompetent in processing the business you are trying to bring in, and in many cases is outsourced to other countries to reduce costs. I have gotten e-mails from these individuals that are nearly impossible to even comprehend. It appears that they are written by a kindergartner. They will NIGO nearly everything you send, and make up the rules as they go. And most incredibly, the operations people are treated in a way that makes you feel inferior to them. For example, if you forget to upload a client statement (required) for a financial plan, a terse e-mail will be sent directly to your regional director to chastise you for not following company policy. Finally, if you are lucky enough to actually get the money over, you will spend weeks begging operations people to give you "credit" for the sale. You do not automatically receive credit for deposits clients send in, even after you have worked with them for many years. You will have to ask everyone to please notify you first before sending any money so you can enter an "opportunity" to receive credit. Other aspects of this job that will make you miserable include having metrics to track every single aspect of what you do. Included in this are assets brought in, meetings held, retention of assets, your pipeline, how many referrals to other departments you make, phone calls you made to unengaged clients, client survey results, how many different products you utilized, etc. These metrics will be used as the "stick" in mandatory meetings that are held every week. It won't matter if you have brought in the most assets in your office. They just find something else to show you how much more productive you could be if you just did MORE. Its almost hard to describe just how miserable a working environment this place can be. The company culture is one where they are constantly inundating you with messages of "living our core values of putting the client first." You will hear this almost daily. However, what this means is that all of your clients outside assets should be transferred into managed money. Even their existing low cost retirement plans where they are paying 25-50 BPS should be transferred into managed money where they will pay 100-175 BPS. It will be suggested that this is the best interests of the client and "puts them in a better place". Now I understand that this isn't the most reprehensible thing in the world as all financial firms are looking to annuitize assets, however, the managed account program has significantly underperformed and is not tactical in any way. There is very little management of the portfolio that even takes place, with the exception of occasional rebalancing. It is simply a way to increase revenues for the firm while hiding behind "core values". I've never seen one that has outperformed any comparable index. Finally, I must also warn you that various areas of the company act as silos and there is little to no communication between them. Moving money into and out of the various products is cumbersome in that even if they have POA setup on their managed account, for example, this isn't recognized by the annuity division. You and your support staff will constantly be trying to transfer money into and out of accounts and having to ask clients to send you yet another voided check because "this division of TIAA is separate from that one." It creates a terrible client experience and one that makes your clients very hesitant to transact business with you, much less referring you to others. Bottom line is that every single advisor in my office is somewhere between miserable and barely tolerating their job.