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| *Ostroff, Fair and Company>>>Financial Services |
Primerica Versus World Financial Group? |
2 of my friends from each company are trying to recruit me. Give me your best input if you are from either company. Please, current agents of each company only..... give me details! products, compensation, room for growth. Let the battle of the Financial gurus begin! And, oh, no blood and gore, just be professional! Thanks! I agree that you need to take a look at both companies to see what each has to offer. I've personally been involved with both, so I have a perspective from both angles. I would start this response, however, by saying the only similarity between the two is that they both deal in finance. Otherwise they're very, very different organizations. Primerica is a fine company. They're backed by Citi, and are now attached to SolomonSmithBarney as well. The Primerica philosophy about how a family should be taken care of, however, is rather limited. Speak with any Primerica agent and you'll be told you should buy term life insurance and invest in mutual funds with the money you save by not putting permanent insurance in place. Ultimately, the philosophy is to avoid mixing your insurance and investments in one product, and often you're told that when your term insurance expires, you can simply sell off some of your mutual funds to "make back" the premiums you paid for the term insurance over the years. What families are often not told, however, is that there are numerous tax consequences behind the theory - both income and capital gains tax issues that the families are not appropriately prepared to deal with. Curiously, most Primerica agents will also tell you they flatly refuse to sell anything other than term insurance, even if a family specifically tells them they want permanent insurance that will last until the end of their lives. I was told that if a family wanted anything other than term insurance, and wanted to learn how to save or invest money in a vehicle that would later yield tax-free income results, that family could not be my client, plain and simple. In that regard you need to decide whether you agree with providing only very simplistic options to your potential clients. Regarding the compensation structure, the earlier answer makes clear what Primerica generally pays. If an average term policy (which is Primerica's focus) pays $1,000 in total commission, and a new agent makes 25%, then the average payout on a transaction is $250. World Financial Group has a starkly different pay structure. The average total commission on a life policy (since that's Primerica's focus) sold by a World Financial Group representative is $3,000. A World Financial Group rep also begins at 25%, meaning the commission is $750 rather than $250. Additionally, World Financial Group offers a far larger listing of products and services to its clients. This means two things to me: First, a World Financial Group rep doesn't ever sit down with a family with an agenda in mind - he or she doesn't need to make one product or service fit for everyone. If it's term insurance the family wants, a World Finanicial Group rep has 200 insurance carriers to choose from, and can provide the term insurance. A Primerica agent has one carrier to go with. If it's something else the client wants (a mortgage, cash value life insurance, a 401(k) plan, educational planning, stock investment, mutual funds, etc.), the World Financial Group rep can not only provide all of that from one or more of several thousand different providers, but can also make a commission on all of it. This can mean several thousand dollars in commission to a World Financial Group associate on a single family's financial plan. This brings me to a final point, and that is licensing. World Financial Group has a large resource available for both life and securities licensing. At Primerica, the average agent is not strongly encouraged to pursue a securities license. Lack of that license means less commission, and I found that most Primerica agents are only prepared to sell the term insurance, and then refer the mutual fund transaction on to someone else. In the end, you need to decide which philosophy and which compensation structure is right for you, and where you'll be able to build faster and stronger. In closing, the following are a number of general differences from the agent's and client's point of view: 1. WFG term insurance prices tend to be less than Primerica prices because WFG deals with so many carriers, and Primerica doesn't; 2. WFG has a system in place to provide estate planning services to clients through varies estate planning attorneys - Primerica doesn't; 3. WFG can offer long term care insurance through varied carriers, Primerica can't; 4. WFG can offer financial planning through varied carriers respecting business and other needs (i.e. 419 plans, etc.), Primerica can't; 5. Typically, it takes Primerica agents longer on average to reach a vested position in the company (the RVP level), whereas WFG agents typically reach a vested position (the QMD level) in a shorter amount of time; 6. Recruiting in Primerica is really rather mandatory if you want your business to do well, and with WFG, recruiting is rather optional; 7. WFG offers its representatives renewal commissions on many products offered by outside providers, and Primerica agents do not receive the same types of renewal commissions; 8. WFG offers securities product trail commissions to its agents on an average 1% commission on money under management. Primerica's agents typically receive something closer to .0075%. 9. WFG agents can offer their clients property and casualty insurance through approximately 75 varied carriers. Last I heard, Primerica had discontinued its property and casualty service. The other way you can evaluate this is to have a Primerica agent and a WFG agent (separately) sit down with you and give their presentations so you can judge the way the presentations are made by each company. Treating yourself as a client in front of each rep may give you a better idea which company is right for you, since it will give you an opportunity to decide which type of presentation you'd rather be giving as an agent yourself. If you go to ripoffreport.com you will read different things that people say. Most of the things you will read about Primerica on that website is their recruiting ethnics. On World Financial Group, you will read that their agents have to pay bunch of expenses such as office rent and how many of them have serious concerns about the products they sell. Anyway, both companies have 2 completely different views. Primerica sells term insurance and invest the difference. WFG prefers to bundle them together, which is called cash value life insurance. Primerica offers various ways a client can save for retirement such as opening a Roth IRA and/or opening a variable annuity. WFG prefers to sell variable universal life as a retirement vehicle. Even though a prospectus may say it gets a 12% rate of return, life insurance has lots of fees that reduces that rate of return to 8% and below. Plus, if you wanted to take money out of the life policy, you have to borrow it and loan interest will be charged. Anyway, both companies have completely different philosophy. You judge which company is doing the right thing for families and which one isn't. As for compensation, Primerica offers lots of financial products. To keep things simple, I'm just going to stick with life insurance. When you get licensed in the company, your first starting level will be "Representative." On life insurance, a representative will get 25% commission. An average life premium on our life policies is $1000/year. So a representative will get paid $250. If you bring 3 people aboard and they join you, you get promoted to Senior Representative. A Senior Rep makes 35% commission on life insurance. If you do the work on your own, you get paid $350. If one of your Reps does a sale, he gets paid $250 and you get paid an override of $100. If you promote a Senior Rep, you get qualify to for the District Leader promotion. A District Leader gets 50% commission on life insurance. If you do the work on your own you get paid $500. If your Senior Rep does a sale, he gets paid $350 and you get paid $150. If you have a Rep that does a sale, he gets paid $250 and you get paid $250. If you promote a District Leader, you qualify for Division Leader promotion. A Division Leader gets paid 60% commission. If you promote a total 3 District Leaders, you qualify for Regional Leader promotion. A Regional Leader gets paid 70% commission. If you promote 6 District Leaders, and you and your team put in $10,000 in premiums for 2 straight months, you qualify for Regional Vice President. A RVP gets 95% commission and bonuses! An average RVP in this company makes about $100,000/year. If you were a RVP and you promote a RVP making $100k, your potential override is $70k-$80k/year! Primerica lets you expand your business. You can recruit as many people as you want. Not everyone is going to join, but you will find people who are serious about building a business. You can recruit and build a team in UK, Canada, Spain, and Puerto Rico if you want. You can build a team in the states surrounding your state. Anywhere you want to build in these countries, you can do it. The other products such as investments and loans are not factors in getting your promotion. Only life insurance premiums and recruits will get you promoted. But in most of the products we offer, you will get an override. Our loan business is the one that generates lots of income because lots of families have debt. These loans are designed to help a family get out of debt sooner versus keeping them in debt for the full length of the term. http://www.primerica.com My suggestion to you is to go to an opportunity meeting with your friend who is recruiting you and see what Primerica has to offer you. Then go to an interview with his Regional Vice President and see if you are what the VP is looking for in his bussiness. Then based on that information move forward. You can be what you want to be as soon as you want to it is up to you. |
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