Ameriprise Careers and Ameriprise Complaints from a Recruiter
Ameriprise Career is nothing but a glorified pyramid scheme. Just so you know this is not the opinion of a disgruntled customer, but is a compilation of my experiences along with those of my friends who have worked for Ameriprise, or what was once American Express Financial Advisors until they had to spin them off due to them tarnishing the brand name. Some of the details may vary by office and region, but the basics are the same. Do not start a career with Ameriprise or give them money until you read this.
I was a recruiter for Ameriprise, but over time gained the trust of many of the advisors who after a few drinks would tell me their confessions. In addition I had a few friends who fell for their sell and worked for a few months before catching on to what it was really all about. As a recruiter I literally scoured online job boards for resumes. It did not matter what the resume said all I needed was a name and a Phone Number of someone who was looking for work. Experience, background, education, none of that mattered. I also did my research and when I heard of layoffs I would jump at the opportunity knowing that these desperate souls would come in to office. The best financial advisors are those are those desperate souls who are in need of money and are willing to do anything to get it.
Here is the breakdown of the recruiting. I would call about 100 to 200 people a night and of those who picked up about 20% would say they would come in. Of those who picked up the phone, half actually showed up for phase one, a simple test you take on the computer to measure your core competency (remember there was no pre-screening so a lot of people couldn’t do simple math). Half would then go to phase two, where you were set up on a mock phone call to see how well you can sell over the phone. And half of those would create a marketing plan, basically you fill out a form with all your family and friends contact information (which gets used by the Ameriprise in the future as leads).
The Ameriprise career breakdown is as follows. You get promised six figures within two years based on some ridiculous statistics they tweek to sound appealing. Here is the secret, if you do not bring enough new clients you get fired, and those people are not counted towards the figures they use. Another ridiculous thing about Ameriprise, you have to pay out of pocket to pass the Series 6 and 7, and in some states Life and Health exams. Amerirpise only pays you back if you pass all the tests in less than six months. So there are a lot of people who waste a lot of time and money and cannot move on because they feel like they already invested so much and get trapped by Amerirpise.
If you don’t believe me that Amerirprise Financial Sucks look for yourself and tell me it doesn’t sound shady. Here is a list of some competitors as well, you make up your mind:
Now that you know how the people are being recruited to help you make your financial decisions, lets now look at why their incentives are not in your best interest as an investor. Ameriprise is nothing but a middle man that sells you financial products. The advisors get paid based on fees and most importantly, maybe the biggest secret, commissions. The commissions are only made once the quota is met for the month. So here is a young faced kid out of college, who knows slightly more than the average consumer about investing, charging you 300 dollars to push products that give him the biggest commissions, often time its Ameriprise products disguised with fancy names. Imagine if he has not made quota for the month and it’s the 3rd week of the month, you bet he will be pushing you to make some bad investments just to make the sale. Believe it or not sometimes the advisors get so desperate that they charge themselves for consulting fees in order to make quota for the month.
All Ameriprise is good for is a Ameriprise free lunch for your office. They place “fish bowls” in different restaurants where you drop you name and number for a free lunch for you and your friends. They use these lunches as an opportunity to sell their services. If you are a person who is not easily sold I strongly suggest signing up.
I would like to point out that there are advisors with integrity and firms that do provide quality service. One just has to do their homework and decide whether you really want someone making such important decisions about money for you. Make sure to check that advisors past performance and that his incentive payout is based on performance and not abstract fees and taxes.
Do you really think so ?
How funny. I recently uploaded my resume online, and the first company that contacted me was Ameriprise. They scheduled me for an interview, but after reading this, I think that I will cancel it.
I found it odd that Ameriprise would schedule an interview with someone like me that doesn’t have any type of experience in the Finance industry.
I got caught in the Ameriprise trap. I was just out of college and they contacted me with all the grand promises of six figure incomes. The paperwork they gave me stated that I would have three jobs: Mornings, Nights, and weekends. I got up to the last test I had to pass, and missed it by one point twice. They said I would have to pay $250 just to try and take the test again (I would have still had to pay for the test itself (another 60). That was enough for me!
I have dealt with Ameriprise as a comsumer and how I would characterize them is that their advisors conduct themselves in a predatory manner. They are so hungry that they will use all and every method to weasel their way into your financial affairs. I sent for a free financial planning pamplet and even though I put down on the card that they could not contact me ( I am on the DO NOT CALL LIST) I started receiving persistent and harrassing phone calls. I finally caved in and met with what they called a “financial planner”, a Jarrod Rutledge. From there, things went downhill fast. Once he knew what my assets were he was relentless. I intimidated and bullied me (when my husband wasn’t present) and I ended up investing in an annuity that was recommended by this planner (I found out later from someone in the business that he would have received the highest commission from this type of investment). I was not informed that there were surrender charges associated with this investment and never received a contract until several weeks after turning over my money. In fact the date of the letter was 11 days after he took the checks. Needless to say, the contract was never given to me and reviewed with me prior to taking my money. Like many people, I have degrees but not in the area of financial investment so I was relying on this so called financial advisor to be my advocate and provide information.
The result of my poor judgement and letting Ameriprise into my life is that the investment value plummeted, while other investments that I have, even under tough market conditions did not lose ground. I filed a complaint with the company and they basically gave me a song and dance but no resolution. I am now seeking assistance from the State of my residence and the Securities and Exchange Commission. I am terrified and totally distrustful of this company and will try to recover what I can and get those assets with a reputable firm.
My advice is to stay as far away from Ameriprise as possible for any and all services.
I read all the previous comments with interest. I am a retired financial advisor and recruiter with over 30 years of experience. I’ve never been associated with Ameriprise or ever known one of their advisors. I imagine that the pressures faced by the financial advisors employed by Ameriprise are similar to those faced by any person working in a sales career.
It is very possible that Ann received less than professional service, which could have happened with any other company, yet is always unacceptable. I was not in Ann’s appointment, but would venture to say that an annuity may not have been an appropriate recommendation for her at the time.
To the person making the original post, the former Ameriprise recruiter, in my opinion you have demonstrated a lack of professionalism with your comments and lack a balanced understanding for those people in the financial advisor career field, both at Ameriprise and elsewhere. Perhaps after having additional years of experience you may mature enough to see things differently than you do now. Be careful not to burn too many bridges in your career. Good luck to you.
Wow! Thanks for all of the warnings. I am scheduled to meet with an Ameritrade financial planner on tomorrow. It was set up after I called in to an early morning radio show here in Atlanta. On the show two guys answer your financial questions over the air. They also offer you a free gas card for calling in. Well, with the price of gas at $4.00/gallon, I called in and made up a question just to get the free gas. They half answered my question on the air and said that they needed to speak with me off the air to give me additional information. They took my contact info and said that they wanted to meet with me in the coming week. Still interested in receiving my free gas card I said OK. The next week I received a call from one of the Ameritrade “financial advisors.” He scheduled me for a time to come to his office for additional advice. They took down my email address to send me confirmation about the appointment. Now here’s the kicker, the email contained the following request, “To make our time together productive and focused on your needs and goals, please bring the following:
Investment Statements, Tax Returns. Any pertinent financial information such as benefits booklets, insurance information, etc…” At this point I knew that this would be nothing more than a session to try to sell me on one of their products. Just for grins, I decided to Google Ameritrade and I came upon this site. Needless to say, I will not be going to my meeting tomorrow. Thanks for the informative posts!
Bobby on June 5th.
Did you mean Ameritrade or Ameriprise? I think you meant the latter, right?
Yeah this article was about Ameriprise or to be more specif American Express Financial Advisors, before AMEX dropped them.
I did my homework on Ameriprise and went to an interview just for amusement. The first thing they asked was my name and SSN. I replied by telling them that I did not feel it was necessary until there was a match. Their reason for my SSN was to take an assessment test. I declined and was met up with a hiring manager. I think she could sense that I was not going to be suckered by her because she said I did not have enough sales experience; therefore, I did not need to take the assessment test.
Ameriprise would put you on salary, bonus, and commission. After two months they put you on a draw.
A little over 2 years ago I got involved with Ameriprise. When I received my confirmation of my investments, I entered the number of units and price into my quicken.com portfolio. Immediately, quicken was showing my investments worth several million dollars, much to my surprise. I called my broker, and he laughed and told me I needed the ticker symbol for the funds and he sent me a list of my investments, the ticker symbol for each and my price per share. When I put those in, they matched up with what I invested with them.
Now over the last 2+ years, quicken would tell me when my funds made a distribution, which I always reinvested. Now there seems to be a substantial difference what Ameriprise is showing my investments are worth and what Quicken is showing. Incidentally, my Ameriprise statement does not show any ticker symbols for my investment, merely N\A for all of them. When I called my broker for an explanation of the discrepancy I get no satisfaction. He’s now telling me to call his compliance officer.
In checking my Ameriprise account and all the statements since my initial investments, I find that my current units are slightly less that my initial investments, which them having charged me for things of which I was unaware. My BIG PROBLEM, though, it that there has been no reinvestment, according to my Ameriprise statements of the disbursements by the mutual funds in which I was told in which I’m invested. It appears I’ve been deceived and my funds are not invested in the funds I was told, or my dividends from my funds, which amount to thousands of dollars, have been stolen by Ameriprise. Any help would be appreciated.
None of this is true because I’ve worked with Ameriprise for five years and we have more CFP’s than any firm in the industry. So we hire great advisors to for our firm. As far as the remarks from the recruiter there are no sales quotas for advisors on a monthly basis. Just like most brokerage firms our advisors must produce at certain levels based on tenure. As far as recommending products our advisors make sound decisions based on financial planning. I know that we put our clients first because I have been a sales manager there for the last two years.
Thank you all for the comments. Conclusion is simple, Ameriprise Financial is like any other large company, there will be bad experiences that arise. The problem is that they prey on people who have the “set it and forget it” mindset with their finance.
@ Micheal, you are a retired and do not know what kind of deceit is going on today in this industry. Mark my words what happened with the “sub prime mortgage crisis” will repeat itself because of companies like Ameriprise Financial.