AIG reviews

Wow, where do I start? This is a pure commission role except you get a "training bonus" of $24k during your first year. After the first year, it disappears. Also, be careful because they will promise you about $15k-25k of residual annual income from your book of business during the interview, but I have not met one person who has received anything close to those figures so make sure to get the promise in writing. They basically tell you this so you will take the job. Also, the training is inadequate. You do not get any sufficient training on procedures or paperwork. You are basically thrown to the wolves with little upfront training. Therefore, when a client calls you for help with service orientated tasks, you will most likely not know how to help them, have to call them back, and they will most likely be upset. You will have to devote a lot of time to teach yourself how to do simple these simple things that they should have taught you how to do adequately (i.e. properly use the CRM software, do paperwork, look up detailed client information, resolve client services issues like address changes, etc) and this will consist of calling the help line and being on hold for while and hopefully getting someone that can actually help you or hoping that a more seasoned advisor will take the time out of their day to teach you how to do things and help you. All in all, you are learning as you go at the expense of the client. AIG is also all about sales. If you have morals and you always put the client first, you will have trouble thriving here. A lot of client are not treated very well. If you don't believe me, google "VALIC complaints" or "AIG Retirement Services complaints" and prepare to be baffled. You will be reading for hours so grab a glass of pinot noir or an IPA and get comfortable. There are countless complaints online. Bad customer service is the culture of the company. Financial Advisors are given more of an incentive to sell than take care of their clients and put their needs first. A lot of the clients that you will get in your book of business are clients that are unhappy and not eager to do business with AIG because they have had 5 financial advisor in the last 5 years and have been receiving awful customer service and inadequate attention. Also, AIG is not the only or primary financial services company that has their money for most of the clients due to the lack of good service. Also, the managers tend to be grossly under-qualified. Most of them are top sales people that were then promoted to a management role even though great sales people almost never translate into great managers. The managers only care about their "scorecard" because it is one of the factors that dictate how the get paid. The "scorecard" consists of different metrics of a district or region. By the way, none of the metrics on the scorecard exclusively measure customer service. All of them measure a sales or headcount. Yes, you heard me-headcount. "Why is headcount a metric?" you ask. It's a metric because the turnover rate is so high that managers have to constantly replace people who are quitting. In order to make sure that managers are hiring people as fast as they are leaving, AIG made it a metric to ensure that managers are always replenishing AIG's supply of FAs. If a manager does not hire fast enough, it negatively affects their pay. If they are doing a good job of hiring as quick as people are leaving, they get a good payday. Also, if you choose to become an enrollment focused advisor, be careful. Most enrollment focused advisors struggle because it is very hard to make a good living while having work life balance as one. Unless you are in a group with little to no competition, you are blessed enough to get a mentor who is working in the group with you, take over a great book of business, or you have years of experience as a financial advisor in the group space getting enrollments, prepare to work very hard for pay that is not commensurate with your efforts for about 2 years before you start making real money. In other words, you will be broke or you will be just scratching a living but will work 10-14 hours per day. Also, it is a culture of nepotism. Many senior advisors get their family members hired, and those family members often are given the best clients, books of businesses, groups, mentorship, and/or support. On top of the nepotism, management blatantly picks favorites. They will give the best clients to the advisors they like the best and give the rest of the clients to the advisors that have not kissed their butt enough. They will tell you it is a pure meritocracy, but it is not. Yes there are some instances when a advisors who prove themselves get better groups, clients, and a better book of business, but being a manager's favorite or someone's family member will get you preferential treatment and further. There is also a lack of female advisors and advisors that arepeople of color, so if you are a woman, black, latino, etc., think twice before accepting the job. Diversity and inclusion isn't really AIG's thing and is not a focus of the company when if comes to recruiting FAs. Lastly, prepare to spend, or as they call it "invest into your practice". The company made its advisor pay for the company cell phone up until recently! You have to buy company branded marketing materials . You will have to buy all of the items necessary to create your own booth/table for events/site visits/workshops/seminars unless you are lucky enough to borrow them (i.e. AIG branded table cloth that is about $80). Also, prepare to put an enormous amount of miles on your vehicle and spend a fortune on tolls and gas in order to cover your groups, see clients, go to events and go to your sites and not be reimbursed for any of those miles! The products can be better. A lot of them are proprietary, have high fees, and under preform. In a climate where investors are savvier and fee sensitive, it is hard to compete with other companies that have a better reputation, better customer service, more products and lower fees. Again, some products are under performing and many are not beating the market. So yes, VALIC is charging high fees for under performing products. Also, they say that they are a full service one stop shop wealth management firm, but they are primarily an insurance provider that mainly sell annuities and insurance that just so happens to offer brokerage products in efforts to keep up with their competitors. At the interview, they will not tell you any of these things because the company is not very transparent and is always selling their advisors a bill of goods. It is not a culture of integrity!