text: ameriprise financial?  anybody have any experience as client or employee?   ameriprise financial is primarily a fee-based brokerage ("financial planning") firm that provides investment services for individuals through agents.  working for ameriprise as an agent is similar in many repects to being an insurance agent.  you are given a number of products to sell and some sales training.  you are expected to generate a list of clients and sell them your services.  your pay is primarily commission based, although they charge their clients flat fees.  you are also expected to attend regular training meetings with other agents.  their preferred products (and thus the ones you make the most commission on) include american express mutual funds and variable universal life insurance.  if you are good at convincing people to buy, you can make a good living.  however, during the first one to two years of practice, you will be working an enormous amount of hours while making relatively little since you have not yet established a client base.  at that stage you will be working mostly from home with little to no guarantee of success.  the difficulty of getting established directly correlates to how many other agents there are in your area.  ameriprise places no restrictions on how close together or far apart even their own agents are - you may end up competing with another, potentially more established agent for business if you're not careful.    other employers that use a similar structure include edward jones, northwest mutual, ag edwards, fidelity investments, and waddell & reed, among many others.  most insurance companies operate using an extremely similar method.