An objective review of Primerica from an industry expert
Primerica (formerly known as PFS / ALW) is a financial services company that uses a multi-level marketing model. For more than three decades, Primerica has been able to produce many, many 6-figure income a year. In the first quarter of 2010, they officially parted ways with the old parent company, Citigroup, and went public. Currently, the sales force consists of 100,000 authorized representatives. Primerica is a legitimate business opportunity and has maintained a good rating from the Better Business Bureau.
With that said, there are pros and cons to the Primerica business opportunity. In this factual review, I’ll go over the pros and cons of the Primerica Opportunity and give you details that you probably don’t know yet.
First, I’ll start with the Pros …
1. Primerica provides a unique opportunity for someone with NO financial services experience to get on board and get licensed and trained in the basics of life insurance, mutual funds, variable annuities, and mortgages.
2. Primerica allows people to come on board part-time, which is RARE in the financial services field. This is a great feature because reps are not under pressure to produce because they still have income from their full-time jobs.
3. With the Primerica model, unlike other MLM opportunities, someone who just wants to market financial products can earn a decent income through sales commissions.
4. Primerica offers a lot of support to its reps … primarily because reps have access to physical offices run by local RVPs.
5. As stated above, Primerica has one of the best track records in the network marketing industry. Currently, there are about 65 leaders in the US and Canada who earn $ 1 million or more in revenue annually.
Now, we are going to give you the disadvantages:
1. Product training is basic, which is sad for some customers who are being served by new representatives. Personally speaking, I would not want my children’s education funds, my retirement accounts, and especially my life insurance accounts to be handled by someone who has a 30-day license and has no experience in actually offering financial advice.
2. Primerica pays representatives a much LOWER commission compared to what they could earn if they were an independent financial services representative.
3. You are a CAPTIVE agent at Primerica. This means that you can ONLY sell Primerica products. While offering only Primerica products may not be a bad thing, as a financial representative, you have a responsibility to your customers to purchase the best possible products for them. While shopping is a common practice for Independent Representatives, it is strictly prohibited at Primerica.
4. As a marketer, you will lose about eighty percent of your new recruits due to licensing exams. Company statistics indicate that ONLY about 20% of incoming representatives pass their life insurance exams. So what about the left above 80%? Well, they basically end up going out of business. Now think about this, 80 of those 100 were people you couldn’t even build a business with because they couldn’t pass the licensing process.
5. This is an important part of the compensation plan that is not shown in the presentation: When they upgrade to RVP, they give the best of one or two tranches to their upline RVP. This is known as “replacement or exchange of property.” Imagine, breaking your butt to reach the highest position, then giving up your BEST leaders and starting the building process all over again … Only this time, as Regional Vice President, you have office expenses to think about. By the way, Primerica requires its RVPs to be full time and prohibits them from making money elsewhere. This is extremely important to know if you are seriously considering the Primerica business opportunity. Because if you want to generate multiple streams of income, you won’t be able to do it once you become an RVP.
In closing, Primerica is a real business opportunity that someone can participate in and learn about financial services and how to build an MLM business. Just be sure to research the products and the compensation plan to know exactly what you’re getting into.
So … should you join?
If you’re looking for a business that doesn’t require HOURS of financial product training, the likelihood of losing a ton of people during licensing exams, and the fact that you have to give your upline your best leaders, then Primerica is definitely not. for you.
However, if you like the idea of hiring agents (and agree with a very high attrition rate) and building your agency with the opportunity to qualify to open your own Primerica office, then Primerica may be an opportunity for you. should explore.
