Pros
- Wonderful teammates, I developed great friendships, you feel like everyone is dealing with the same challenges and teammates are willing to lend a hand or give their time to help you. - My peers are all advisors and I feel that everyone genuinely cares about the clients they serve. Morally, every advisor feels empowered to do what's best for their clients without any conflicts of interest. - Great healthcare plan, decent pto to start - 401k has 4% match and another 10% profit sharing contribution, but you'll need to be here for 6 years to be fully vested. - Help pay for your CFP education, exam fees, and certification fees
Cons
- Salaried but low base pay compared to competitors. Summer partnership bonus is dependent on company's past 3 year performance. Year-end performance bonus is dependent on you hitting your metrics, must hit ALL of your metrics in order to be successful. Salary + partnership bonus + year end bonus = low 6 figures, $100-110k range is what most advisors make. - Department's mission is just words on paper, no substance. "Bringing Advice to Millions" is the mission, emphasis on the "Millions". Upper mgmt used to care about advisors providing meaningful advice and changing clients' lives. As our advice service has grown, upper mgmt only cares about enrollments and less emphasis on making a positive impact on clients' lives. Every other week, the middle managers are asking the same questions, "why aren't you enrolling more clients?" and I don't blame my direct manager, it comes from the top. - 300 clients - The industry's average client base is 100-150 per advisor. Here at Vanguard, I have a little over 300 clients to manage (and I'm still required to enroll more clients). I have lost a few clients who complained that they can't find time on my calendar, it's difficult to provide a more personal service and deepen relationships when you have so many clients to manage and are tackling 5-6 back-to-back appts throughout the day. Clients are often times on hold for more than an hour to take care of simple tasks with our call center service team, they have expressed frustration over our declining service levels. We had a senior manager come to our team huddle, we mentioned that our clients are complaining about the poor service levels, and she said clients shouldn't be expecting white glove service at 30 basis points. I was not expecting that answer from a senior manager. I understand our mgmt fee is so low but after hearing that, our clients are nothing but a number to senior mgmt. - Lack of support - As an advisor, you have no support. If you are out on PTO, your book of business is looked after by another advisor teammate (who also has 250-300 clients), essentially you are managing 500-600 clients if your teammate is out of the office. 2 years ago, the maximum book size was roughly 200-220 clients and that was manageable. On top of that, there are so many administrative and portfolio mgmt work that falls on the Advisor, no para-planners or support staff to assist you. Many of my teammates end up WORKING on their PTO sometimes, and when markets are volatile, using Saturdays to keep up, and with no extra pay since we're salaried. - No work/life balance - There used to be good work/life balance, it was the whole reason why external advisors would join externally and why current employees stayed. The biggest culprit is the increased book size, more clients, more complexity, and lack of support. Due to the cons I mentioned above, you're guaranteed to work average 50 hrs per week, sometimes more if markets are volatile and you have 300+ clients to calm down.