Primerica: All it claims to be?
"Primerica's primary value proposition is that switching from whole or universal life to term life, and investing the difference is a good idea for most people. However, there are a number of other important factors to consider when purchasing life insurance, and I would also be wary of anyone claiming that one product will be the ""best"" for you under all circumstances. Best Insurance? Without getting into a much larger discussion on how to pick insurance companies or products, here are a few things that concern me about Primerica: They have a ""captive"" sales force, meaning their agents sell only Primerica products. This means that they are not shopping around for the best deal for you. Given how much prices on term life have changed in recent years, I would highly recommend taking the time to get alternate quotes online or from an independent broker who will shop around for you. Their staff are primarily part-time employees. I am not saying they are incompetent or don't care, just that you are more likely to be working with someone for whom insurance is not their primary line of work. If you have substantial reason to believe that you may someday need whole life, their products may not suit you well. Primerica does not offer whole life as far as I am aware, which also means that you cannot convert your term life policy through them to whole life should you need to do so. For example, if you experience an accident, are disabled, or have a significant change in your health status in the future and do not have access to a group life policy, you may be unable to renew your individual policy. Above Average Returns? I am also highly skeptical about this claim. The only possible context in which I could find this valid would be if they mean that your returns on average will be better if you invest in the stock market directly as compared to the returns you would get from the ""cash value"" portion of a life insurance product such as universal life, as those types of products generally have very high fees. Can you clarify if this is the claim that was made, or if they are promising returns above those of the general stock market? If it is the latter, run! Only a handful of superstar investors (think Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, and Bill Gross) have ever consistently outperformed the stock market as a whole, and typically only for a limited period of time. In either case, I would have the same concerns here as stated in reasons #1 and #2 above. Even more so than with insurance, if you need investment advice, I'd recommend working with someone who is fully dedicated to that type of work, such as a fee-only financial planner (http://www.napfa.org/ is a good place to find one). Once you know how you want to invest, I would again recommend shopping around for a reputable but inexpensive broker and compare their fees with Primerica's. Kudos on having a healthy level of skepticism and listening to your gut. Also, remember that if you are not interested in their offer, you don't have to prove them wrong - you can simply say ""no thank you."" Best of luck!" "Probably not, though there are a few things to be said for understanding what you are doing here.  Primerica acts as an independent financial services firm and thus has various partners that specialize in various financial instruments and thus there may exist other firms that Primerica doesn't use that could offer better products.  Now, how much do you want to value your time as it could take more than a few months to go through every possible insurance firm and broker to see what rate you could get for the specific insurance you want.  There is also the question of what constitutes best here.  Is it paying the minimal premiums before getting a payout?  That would be my interpretation though this requires some amazing guesswork to know when to start paying a policy to pay out so quickly that the insurance company takes a major loss on the policy. Similarly, there are thousands of mutual funds out there and it is incredibly difficult to determine which ones would be best for your situation.  How much risk do you want to take?  How often do you plan to add to it?  What kind of accounts are you using for these investments, e.g. IRAs or just regular taxable accounts?  Do tax implications of the investments matter? Thus, I'd likely want to suggest you consider this question: How much trust do you have that this company will work well for you in handling the duty of managing your investments and insurance needs?  If you trust them, then buy what they suggest.  If you don't, then buy somewhere else but be careful about what kind of price are you prepared to pay to find the mythical ""best"" as those usually only become clear in hindsight. When it comes to trusting a company in case, there are more than a few factors I'd likely use: Questions - How well do they answer your questions or concerns from your perspective?  Do you feel that these are being treated with respect or do you get the feeling they want to say, ""What the heck are you thinking for asking that?"" in a kind of conceited perspective. Structure of meeting - Do you like to have an agenda and things all planned out or are you more of the spontaneous, ""We'll figure it out"" kind of person?  This is about how well do they know you and set things up to suit you well. Tone of talk - Do you feel valued in having these conversations and working through various exercises with the representative?  This is kind of like 1 though it would include requests they have for you. Employee turnover - How long has this person been with Primerica?  Do they generally lose people frequently?  Are you OK with your file being passed around like a hot potato?  Not that it necessarily will but just consider the possibility here. Reputation can be a factor though I'd not really use it much as some people can find those bad apples that aren't there anymore and so it isn't an issue now.  In some ways you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.  There are more than a few companies that want to get a piece of what you'll invest, buy, and use when it comes to financial products so it may be a good idea to shop around a little." "I was a Primerica representative, left to be on my own, and then returned. Insurance is one matter that depends on the individual. Some do not need it.  For example, when I was an independent agent with an independent marketing organization (IMO) (oh yes! multi-level is everywhere, dont kid yourself) I had an upline as well. We were pushed to sell final expense [burial insurance].  As an ethical agent, I believe this is a bad business practice.  Primerica does not sell unneeded insurance to old people. How can you justify selling the elderly, insurance to cover them for $10,000, at almost 100 to 150 a month? I told my elderly potential clients, after seeing they live on a tight budget,  that they were better off purchasing a cremation policy or funeral package than burial insurances as it would save them money in the long run. Primerica is right in saying they are the only ones out there catering to the Working Class and Middle-America. Where else can you start an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) with $25 a month?  Nowhere! All the other insurance producers want more money. They don't want to spend their time with what they call ""losers"".  I love showing Poor people how the Rich get richer.  Poor people should know the truth."
I'm not familiar enough with finance in any capacity to know what the difference is between financial services or a finance department (beyond what you said); my familiarity of the industry extends to trading, rating, and financial law enforcement. But at a glance on mobile, that looks like pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I have no connect to the industry, but habe been on a Wall St media binge lately, and like to understand powerful/influencial sectors of society anyways. Thanks. "just for shits, i'll give you the excerpts from Liar's Poker:  ""I was living in London in the winter of 1984, finishing a master's degree in economics at the London School of Economics, when I received an invitation to dine with the Queen Mother. It came through a distant cousin of mine who, years before, and somewhat improbably, had married a German baron...  What had been advertised as a close encounter with British royalty proved to be a fundraiser with seven or eight hundred insurance salesmen...Somewhere in the Great Hall, as luck would have it, were two managing directors from Salomon Brothers. I knew this only because, as luck would further have it, I was seated between their wives.  The wife of the more senior Salomon Brothers managing director, an American, took our table firmly in hand, once we'd finished craning our necks to snatch a glimpse of British royalty. When she learned that I was preparing to enter the job market and was considering investment banking, she turned the evening into an interview... Having examined what good had come from my twenty-four years on earth, the asked why I didn't come and work on the Salomon Brothers' trading floor.""  It's a great book, I highly recommend it." All the major American and British banks, with a couple of exceptions. The British government, despite its conservative ideology, is imposing stronger regulatory limits and even discussing 'say on pay' provisions for executive compensation. The US remains wedded to its allegedly free market leanings despite revelations that JP Morgan, among others, receives $14 BILLION a year in government subsidies. And the markets have made it clear that they dont just welcome, but demand government intervention, despite the libertarian rhetorical flourishes of the business lobbies. We may not see the confluence of economic and political policy until after the US presidential election but the widening gap between ideology and reality may hasten the end of that peculiar conceit. It tells you more about some of the convoluted rules put in place by FDA and ither regulatory agencies. It's next to impossible to introduce a true generic competitor. Really not a issue with the insurer as they must cover stuff only approved via the Fed agencies. My opinion of Seeking Alpha is that they try to manipulate stock prices for personal gain.  However, Microsoft is to big to be manipulated by Seeking Alpha, so I'll go with your interpretation.  Edit: I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I think Ballmer is being unfairly blamed for the companies problems. I've tried to argue this to some close friends who bought homes, pre/post-crisis, if the crisis ever ended, they thought it was ridiculous. There is a clear fulcrum where renting makes more sense than buying, when appropriate inputs of data are entered into the model. I think Khan Academy did a good 10-minute run down on the subject and used a relatively good model, as well.   Further than that, I read the first few paragraphs and stopped reading, it was a commercial. I was shocked. The entire thing up till' 2 paragraphs in is literally a commercial.   The supposed 'antagonist', explicitly implied by the title isn't actually an antagonist, it's a click-bait commercial -article posing as a real article, (imitation), that actually might have some real science below the commercial, as you've indicated, but that part also sounds like junk finance; to sell the idea to consumers that they should in fact buy homes (instead of rent), and get loans from banks (preferably this one), and do anything to achieve that, if need be, even move in with their parents.   This financial institution appears to have a sophisticated public relations marketing team doing their commercials-posing-as-news campaign(s).   Very interesting to see the marketing beast morph itself into something so sophisticated, as to contain such clear imitation, junk science, and click-bait. I wonder what kind of penetration they are getting with this model, and what percentage of those see it for what it is.   I suppose that would be a big-data question, answerable through analytics. Ok so this is the best information I could get!  It is a guarantee from a financial institution that payment will be made for items or services once certain requirements are met.  Let me know if this helps!  I'll try to get more info in the meantime. None of what you said is correct. Wells Fargo makes over half of it's net income from community banking. Investment Banking is tucked inside of the Wholesale division and represents a relatively small piece of that. Wells' auto portfolio is at $58 billion; by no means as large as say the mortgage exposure, but certainly nothing to sneeze at. If anyone is interested in looking into it, the company Pinnacle has actually been using theory from quantitative finance for a long time. I went to one of their talks during useR!2017 in Brussels, really interesting betting company. Except this problem wasn't caused by Fanny or Fredie.  That's just a conservative spin on the issue.  It was caused by CDOs and CDSs, which would have happened no matter what.  Fanny and Freddie exacerbated the issue, perhaps, but didn't cause the entirety of the problem. So extenuating circumstances might make it OK for someone to lie to you.    In this specific case, BofA withheld material information from its shareholders and asked them to approve the merger on the basis of known false information.  This is, by definition, fraud. Well, that's great.  Still doesn't change the fact that it's a joke.  By design it's capped at around 21 million units, that's not a currency - someone is making money off of it, and not by the value going up, but by trading it.  Likely algorithms - if it's not you, you're the fool.  It's a joke, no one takes it seriously.  Truck drivers are buying the shit telling people it's the best thing in the world.  Sound familiar?  1929?  2007? I agree, but if that's *all* a person wants to discuss out of that story thats missing the forest for the trees.  Also for the record,  the $800 billion in 2007-2008 vs the larger muni bond market isn't actually a lie.  You simply had a problem that it referred to more than just the 2007-2008 time frame.    That's all.  And either way it isn't material to the larger story here which was the fraud.    Nobody got 'caught lying'. Prepaid Legal is a publicly traded company worth over $600M. They've been around for years. So it's not a fly-by-night operation. I don't know enough to comment on whether their kind of MLM is legal. Publix is another employee owned massive chain, grocery store but also in Florida. Have known someone work their way up to GM and be sitting on quite a load of stocks.  Some insurance companies in Florida are also privately held and give employees stock options.