Most would agree that if you make it past your second year as an advisor at Ameriprise, your workplace experience improves dramatically. The phone clinics go away, you are no longer micromanaged, no more 60hrs workweek and most importantly: no more pressure to push inappropriate products just to make a paycheck. As a level 3 advisor (LOS 3+), I worked 9-4pm, my time was spent meeting with my best clients, writing REAL financial plans (not the McMeal plans that new advisors "write"), doing was best for my clients and getting rewarded with an occasional refferal client. I was making an honest and guilt-free $70K/yr.

But then "Greenfield" came along. "Greenfield" is the code name for Ameriprise's new strategy for managing its employees. All the sudden, to keep my job as is, I needed to write a rolling $130K (the new minimum is 100% of pace!). If I fell below it, I would go back to the preappointee schedule of phone clinics, classes and 60hr workweeks. That meant that I would have to go back to cold-calling and pushing innapropriate products all over again to keep the practice and income that I had built in the last three years.

Now, the FVP told me it would not be so bad because as a level 3 advisor, I qualified for "PLANSOURCE".  Plansource would allow me to spend more time marketing and making the money I needed to stay where I was. How is that you ask? Well, Plansource is a financial plan outsourcing service from India that writes financial plans for advisors.  According to my FVP, I would have no problem meeting the metrics for "Greenfield" because all my plans would now be written by reps in India!  I would no longer have to worry about financial planning and I could spend all time marketing!!!!

So basically, Ameriprise wanted me to become a fulltime telemarketer who pretends to be a financial advisor. Worse yet, my clients would now have their financial futures written by reps in India who need not be licensed, have an education or have any experience whatsoever.  My clients did not hire me to have me hand them off to Indian reps for their planning.  So, I left.

All I'm going to say to that is WOW!!!

$130k is not as easy as some would think.  Plansource is a horrible idea.  Do you really want your financial future being written by some dude in India who has knows absolutely nothing about you outside of numbers on a table?  Advisor will provide some guidance on writing the actual plan but I still hate the idea.

newwoomap1 wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2008, 8:10am:


I'm LOS3 and its certainly not easy to write a rolling $130k, but its not beyond the realm of possibility.  I wrote $105k last year as LOS2 for most of the year but about half of that was from 4 big cases.

It would stimulate the economy because wages would be paid to our own citizens and it would create jobs, pretty simple really.

I told you in the first post, I would probably spend more time reviewing the plans written by the indians to make sure they didn't screw anything up than I would if I wrote the plans myself.  

Whats wrong with 1,000-2,000 extra jobs???  If 50-60 more corporations in America did the same thing and created a few more jobs, whats that, 50,000-60,000 extra jobs AT LEAST right there?  Come on, I'm not saying that Ameriprise would save the country, but it would be a nice contribution.  Tell me that our economy doesn't need it at this point.  Are you saying that our economy doesn't need all it can be given at this point?

i agree with birmingham on the point that $130k is hard at Amp but at other firms definitely not.  I think this is primarily due to target markets.  At AMP they're like 300 dials and that's a good week.  I remember when I was an assistant at Merrill, there was a new guy and all he would do is page the phone book.  Dial from 8 AM to 6 PM.  That was it.  

Now in terms of the economy (not gonna get into a political debate about whose fault or what not), this is due anyways.  I think we were in the second longest bull market in history up until this decline began.  Let it go down, it it take its course.  I'm not opposed to buying stocks on sale while everyone else sells.

newwoomap1 wrote on Mar 4^th, 2008, 7:12am:


Ok, if national unemployment isn't a concern, then take a look at local unemployment.  Take 4 or 5 of some cities or counties that are among the highest rate of unemployment in the country and set up Ameriprise offices there that are specifically geared towards the financial plan writing side.  Problem solved.  Ameriprise wasn't created to solve the problem of helping out the unemployment rate, but if they can keep from outsourcing thousands of jobs that they could easily keep domestic then why not do it?  

FYI, the more cheap cracks that you make at someone, the more irrelevant you sound.  Can we keep the conversation on an adult level?

newwoomap1 wrote on Mar 4^th, 2008, 7:12am:


http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/06/news/economy/jobs_outlook/index.htm?postversion=...

I guess its not observed by me...?