TransAmerica Financial; pros, pros and cons, or cons?
February 25, 2020 2:28 PM Subscribe
The local Transamerica agency (Colorado area) is expanding; and seeking agents.
I'm new to the job market again, I love numbers; and kinda a very small scale financially ok bum due to a decade+ of living boring slow and without much ado about anything, and investing with the rest.
They do investments; and various insurances. And numbers. I like numbers.
Math and English degrees have I; and a touch of Spanish language too.
Beloved MeFi community; pros and cons of Transamerica?
I'm new to the job market again, I love numbers; and kinda a very small scale financially ok bum due to a decade+ of living boring slow and without much ado about anything, and investing with the rest.
They do investments; and various insurances. And numbers. I like numbers.
Math and English degrees have I; and a touch of Spanish language too.
Beloved MeFi community; pros and cons of Transamerica?
I love numbers
Seconding that you will not be running numbers and will be expected to sell.
posted by soelo at 3:07 PM on February 25, 2020 [1 favorite]
Seconding that you will not be running numbers and will be expected to sell.
posted by soelo at 3:07 PM on February 25, 2020 [1 favorite]
Transamerica is apparently one of the companies that won't proactively pay out life insurance benefits even though they know the insured is dead. This is a problem because beneficiaries often don't know that the insured has a policy. See this.
You would be working for an apparently unethical company.
posted by H21 at 3:08 PM on February 25, 2020
You would be working for an apparently unethical company.
posted by H21 at 3:08 PM on February 25, 2020
https://ivetriedthat.com/transamerica-wfg-primerica-what-do-these-businesses-have-in-common/
Some might say these are high risk items that appear to be sold in a pyramid-like shape.
posted by nickggully at 3:20 PM on February 25, 2020 [5 favorites]
Some might say these are high risk items that appear to be sold in a pyramid-like shape.
posted by nickggully at 3:20 PM on February 25, 2020 [5 favorites]
If this is the institutional or business-services side of Transamerica, go for it. I externally managed one of Transamerica's institutional funds a few years back and liked everyone in Denver I dealt with. Unrelatedly, my firm's offices are now on the 5th floor of a building occupied by Transamerica on the 2nd and 3rd floor, and their people seem diverse and pleasant and busy.
If it is WFG, the multi-level-market division of Transamerica, stay away.
However, it being an MLM actually isn't the main right reason to stay way. It's because it's a friends-and-family insurance sales mill and that's a job that virtually no one makes money at and almost no one develops any portable skills for real consultative wealth management or insurance brokerage careers.
MLM variants of this (WFG, Primerica, etc.) also demand that you recruit other people to sell to their friends and family, but at least in theory if you do that well you can make real money.
Non-MLM variants (a lot of big insurance companies with fully legitimate products, unfortunately) have your blow through your friends and family list, and then start on terribly qualified cold call "lead" lists and fire you unless you turn out to be in the top 5% or whatever of cold callers.
(Big insurance companies serious sales are done through corporate sales and through independent brokers and wealth managers.)
posted by MattD at 11:01 PM on February 25, 2020
If it is WFG, the multi-level-market division of Transamerica, stay away.
However, it being an MLM actually isn't the main right reason to stay way. It's because it's a friends-and-family insurance sales mill and that's a job that virtually no one makes money at and almost no one develops any portable skills for real consultative wealth management or insurance brokerage careers.
MLM variants of this (WFG, Primerica, etc.) also demand that you recruit other people to sell to their friends and family, but at least in theory if you do that well you can make real money.
Non-MLM variants (a lot of big insurance companies with fully legitimate products, unfortunately) have your blow through your friends and family list, and then start on terribly qualified cold call "lead" lists and fire you unless you turn out to be in the top 5% or whatever of cold callers.
(Big insurance companies serious sales are done through corporate sales and through independent brokers and wealth managers.)
posted by MattD at 11:01 PM on February 25, 2020
Response by poster: Yeah, this turned out to be a disaster; I was supposed to contact everybody I've ever known, and have them watch a video / do a Zoom chat, give them contact info; etc etc etc.
Transamerica would not tell me what the video was even about; what they invested in, look at the product they were selling; yeah. Bad.
Can't say it was a sham; but yeah. Waste of my time, fuel to drive there, and yeah. Waste.
posted by Afghan Stan at 12:19 PM on April 19, 2020
Transamerica would not tell me what the video was even about; what they invested in, look at the product they were selling; yeah. Bad.
Can't say it was a sham; but yeah. Waste of my time, fuel to drive there, and yeah. Waste.
posted by Afghan Stan at 12:19 PM on April 19, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
If you work as an agent in one of these places, you're going to be expected to do a lot of cold-calling and salesmanship. The amount of actual numbers may not be to your liking - agent run the gamut of people with your background to people who are really good at sales and can plug in numbers into internal webforms.
Your job would be heavily commission-driven - so much so that they might cut bait with you if you're not meeting quotas/acting too responsibly.
posted by unexpected at 2:39 PM on February 25, 2020 [1 favorite]