As stated above, the FA positions are just glorified cold-calling sales jobs. If that suits your personality then you can make a lot of money over time once you have a client base built up. As for AXP, they have a classified ad in the local Sunday paper here every single week, so that tells me its an extrememly high turnover job. I had a friend that worked there and they wanted him to hit up all his family and friends right away, so you run the risk of being the family "Amway" guy, where people steer clear of you at Christmas.
Great thread! My girlfriend is currently finishing her first full year as a Financial Advisor for American Express. She is not well connected so she has had to find her clients. So far, she is clearing around $3,500 a month in commissions which isn't bad for the lifestyle she lives. But, if you take the amount she makes a month and divide that by the number of hours she works, you can see the hourly wage is very poor. $3,500 / 60 hours a week = $14.58 per hour. The question is, will the amount she makes in her second year exceed the first year while maintaining and/or decreasing the number of hours. My opinion to her is that it is great to work hard, but it is better to work smarter...
I have looked into some other trading houses already. Most of my friends and associates are into some sort of financial job themselves, so I wouldn't have a big base of customers. Their payouts do seem high (50-60%) for in house corp. advisors and they don't allow cold calls. About 1/4 of the calls are from the bank and are cardholders, another 20% are inqueries from other corp. alliances like costco employees and several other alliances they have. I appreciate the great veiwpoints on this thread and thank you all for your time responding. I have had a lot of trouble finding credible advice.
If you like sales & you are people's person, that may be a great job for you. Otherwise I do not think you will enjoy it. The only advantage for you at the end of the day is to get your Series 7 and other licenses and hop onto another position...
How long ago did you work there and how long have you been trading? How do you feel about the decision to change?
I thought I would write and fill you in on the details. I currently work at Amex Financial Advisors. Pretty much the posts are responding to your questions are accurate. You work at least 60 hours a week and make chump change. I will make 30-35k my first year. An advisor with a good start will realisticly make 35-40k first year. It takes a lot longer than they tell you in the career preview to make the big bucks. You can expect to get between 20-30 clients first year or upwards of 40 if you're good. Also, they try to work your natural market heavily real fast. The goal is to get you to jump off to a fast start because that helps retention rate. I work with some of the best, so money is made in this industry (and good money too). Simply put, if you like sales, can work long hours in the first 3 years, and don't mind approaching your friends to become clients, you'll like it. It is a very difficult position but so is anything that makes money. YOU JUST NEED TO MAKE SURE SALES IS WHERE YOU WANT TO BE. The financial advisor side is a very very very small side to this industry and you don't get to be hands on with financial instruments like stocks and stuff like most people think. I spend maybe 15-20 minutes per client per year entering their trades.
My opinion is that it is not about this year or next year....it is about 5 years , or 10 years down the road. If she continues to build the business, she will have a nice customer base....and a very consistent and large residual income. My cousin got into the insurance business working for prudential...and today he has a fantastic lifestyle...works just a few hours a week...and makes great money. In talks with him, he confirmed how hard he worked the first few years, just getting by, but today all that hard work was worth the effort.
I thought I read somewhere recently that AXP was ditching the FA business. Maybe it was some other company. I think the comments about selling, etc are very accurate. Unless you have the personality for it, I'd avoid it. I think a more promising avenue would be to hook up with a legitimate asset manager, or perhaps go for a sales/trader position withsomeone like NITE. I recnetly read some comments by the blogger Random Roger who is a portfolio manager for an asset manager. He thinks the days of FA's who put clients into various high load mutual funds, ie what AXP would expect you to do, are limited. Too much competition from asset managers and brokers who are offering various low fee ETF portfolios. That said, there will always be a market for people who can sell and are good at handholding clueless people with money.