AXA Advisors Reviews

Former Employee – worked at AXA Advisors full-time for less than a year

Pros – The company invests more in its advisors than any other company

Cons – You have to be a driven person to succeed in this business. First few years the pay is minimal compared to the work but in the latter years the pay exceeds most other jobs.

Advice to Senior Management – For new advisors, invest more material into educating them in what exactly they need to do to succeed instead of loading them with excessive product knowledge at first.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at AXA Advisors as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Good working environment. Handle with cases directly. No big pressure.

Cons – No need brain while working. Don't know what exactly the products are.

Current Employee – been working at AXA Advisors full-time for more than a year

Pros – As an employee, you enjoy a regular schedule that is also flexible based on agreement between yourself and the FPs you support. You get to know many people at different stages in their career and learn how best to help them, and in turn the company, do better. The company has lots of internal opportunities for advancement and development.

Cons – Unless you are in a main branch office, your ability to advance within the company in the same location may be limited. You may be the only employee in the area, so when conferences and other employee meetings take place, you are unable to attend because it is your responsibility to "man the fort" at your local office. You also need to play a balancing game with the FPs, as you want to not be perceived as playing favorites.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AXA Advisors full-time for less than a year

Pros – Autonomous Structure
Vast Networking
Potential for High Income
They make you feel like you are your own boss

Cons – Extremely low financial security
Mostly Commisions
There is way too much funding on your end in the short run
Feels like you're paying them to work for them in the beginning

Advice to Senior Management – Invest in your advisors more. It will motive them to earn you more.
Invest in recent graduates who do not have the financial stability to front payments in the short run.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AXA Advisors full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Entrepreneurial. Unlimited earnings potential, work as much or as little as you like, you're basically a small business owner. Open architecture, advisory and brokerage platform through LPL Financial (largest independent broker/dealer). Insurance products, in addition to AXA Equitable Life & Annuity can be sourced through other companies (MetLife, Genworth, Allianz, Prudential, Hartford, Genworth, WilliamPenn, Banner, etc). *See advice to management*

Cons – "Eat what you kill" culture. Zero base salary, 100% commission. You need to find your own clients/prospects generally through old calling. Unless you have an established network that can provide sustainable/consistent lead sources, but that is the exception not the norm. Highly political management is all sales guys who are given incentives to increase their override over what's necessarily right for the advisor or client. *See advice to management.

Advice to Senior Management – District managers are incentivized to hire quantity over quality, and push proprietary products. This results in managers hiring whoever can breath, throwing them against the wall and seeing who sticks. Ultimately this results in a lot of people failing out of the business, but this is ok for managers because their compensation is heavily tied to first year proprietary production, where new advisors burn through their family, friends and network, and worst case are "cheap labor" cold calling for other advisors, which is justified as joint work to learn from more experienced advisors. Also managers push option 1 commissions where a higher one-time commission is paid out but no future commissions/fees are paid out because their override is tied to the bigger number and weighted more on new advisors than experienced advisors. This is bad for the advisor and client long-term: there is no longer an incentive for the advisor to service that client and the advisor is hurting himself by living sale-by-sale instead of growing a reoccurring revenue stream. It should be management goal for each advisor to build a practice that generates a reoccurring revenue stream - this will incentivize the advisor to stay longer and to service the client better. The advisor will have a more steady predictable income source and have a more valuable practice that can be sold at retirement to another advisor because the reoccurring revenue can be valued.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AXA Advisors full-time for more than a year

Pros – There is unlimited earning potential, you are in complete control of your own schedule, own your own book of business, and are able to provide valuable financial services and tools to those who need it. The employee benefits are pretty good including a generous stock option plan, a nice bonus structure, and residual pay.

 It is a postion where if you can make it through the daily grind for 10+ years you will be very happy with the money made and is without a doubt a job you should only consider if you are truly looking for a long term position with a company. Don't work here if you only want to get 1-2 years of experience and move on, it's not worth it and there are better places to do that, but if you go in with a long term perspective it can be a good opportunity for those that are driven, competitive, and good in a sales/numbers environment.

Cons – It is one of the hardest jobs I've encountered and the numbers back it up as there is a little less than a 15% retention rate of employees after 4 years. A big part of this is there are a lot of costs associated with the job, for example: you rent your office space from the company and have to pay for it, the same with the mandatory company computer, as well as your licenses, the majority of the planning and organizational software necessary to do the job, and professional liability insurance among other expenses. It's not uncommon for my first salary paycheck ever month to go entirely to these costs.

You spend about the first 3 months of work without any form of salary so in additional to trying to learn about all the products and services, you are required to try to sell these products in order to make money, even though you do not know enough to adequately sell them. Additionally in the short term the pay isn't competitive with other companies in the industry, it gets better after about 5 years and catches up, but that is due to the compounded residual pay in addition to the bonus structure.

There is a terrible work/life balance as I typically find myself leaving home by 5:30am and getting back home after 10pm. This is mainly because the job is at it's core a sales job, which would be fine, but in addition to going through the typically sales process (prospecting, making calls, preparing for appointments, running appointments, closing the sale) you don't have an assistant of any type so you are also responsible for the administrative half of the sale (filling out paperwork, processing paperwork from start to finish, following up with and correcting any errors made by yourself, the client, or the home office-who unfortunately are very understaffed and as a result make an immense amount of mistakes). This gets better after time when you can afford to hire an assistant to handle the follow up and paperwork, but again that is an entirely out of pocket expense with no company support.

There isn't a very clear channel of communications at any level of the company. When paperwork needs to be followed up on you can easily wait on hold for 30+ minutes just to talk to 4 different people about the same problem before ever getting to someone who can solve it. There needs to be a restructuring and a serious reevaluation of how best to provide insurance.

Advice to Senior Management – Do more to develop and support new employees. There is no reason to be charging the employees to use office space just to increase the bottom line. It shouldn't be an acceptable practice or considered normal in the company to hire 20 people and after 10 have quit, lose another 5 on top of that just because even though they are good at the job, they simply can't afford to continue to work at the company. Something seriously needs to be done about that. Additionally, there needs to be some encouragement and support for a life outside of work. Your sales staff shouldn't be spending an extra 30 hours/ week doing activities that don't bring in money for themselves or the company. An easy fix would to be to provide a few administrative assistants that handle the follow up of paper work and take some of that responsibility from the financial professionals, so instead of paperwork the FP's can do what they are supposed to be doing, which is make sales and bring in money.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at AXA Advisors full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Excellent product brokerage division. Senior employees who have been in the industry for decades and built successful careers can be an excellent resource, but it is self-initiated.

Cons – Managers unable to retain quality employees, as the training and assistance is sub-par. Limited potential as a new advisor.

Advice to Senior Management – Re-evaluate the RBG program as a whole.

Current Employee – been working at AXA Advisors as an intern

Pros – Rotation, flexible work hours, very nice people.

Cons – Pretty much the only path you have as an option after the internship is to become an insurance salesman.. LOTS and LOTS of cold calling.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AXA Advisors full-time for more than a year

Pros – Place to go and work

Cons – Many start up costs that they don't tell you about and high turn over rate

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at AXA Advisors full-time

Pros – *everyone is friendly and wants to see you do well
*managing team does well with pre contracting meetings to help you see what's in store when you pass all your licensing exams
*they don't bs with you, they tell you straight up that this is a difficult profession, you get out of it what you put in

Cons – *have you pay for your tests up front (reimburse after you contract)
*paynwont be great to start
*at the beginning the only way you'll make decent money is by going through your natural market