Was great company -- now declining - Financial Consultant Thrivent Employee Review

Benefits: The benefits are poor. Medical and dental plans are the worse I have ever had in my career. My dentist reminds me every visit how bad my insurance is. Their 401K contribution is great but only if you produce well. Income: Unlimited income if you have 20+ appointments a week. They talk like everyone should have 20+ appointments a week when in reality the average is about 3-4 appointments a week. The cost of running your practice has been increasing over the years. Over the last four years, the compensation has been lowered slowly, while expenses have been increasing slowly. I feel we are getting nickle and dimed for everything now. They have changed the compensation plan 3 times in the last 4 years!!! Lot's of benefits have been removed. Lots of reimbursements have been removed too. Now, they make FRs pay for the marketing brochures whereas a few years ago, we didn't pay for it. I believe these changes were strategic and happened slowly so that the work force wouldn't know what hit them. The universal life business for Thrivent appears to be of particular problems with low interest rate environment. Shifting of expenses and lowering of compensation appears to be a solution that has been implemented over last 4 years to increase bottom line. Products: High emphasis on life insurance and annuities. That's how management gets paid and thats what they want you to sell. Training: The partner's are usually washed out FR's that couldn't make it in their practice. Partners have high turn-over rate just as do the FR's. I have seen my region bring in 5 new partners in the last few years and all those partners ended up becoming FR's because they couldn't recruit enough new hires. These partners that became FR's turned out to be terrible producers too, and most quit. That shows you how the training is. Interview: The interview process is rather easy. They will hire anyone. Each month, they send about 50-60 new hires to headquarters for one week of training. My group was of 50 new hires was four years ago. Of the 50, I think about 6 are still with the company. That shows you the turn-over rate.