What Does It Take to Be a Financial Representative?

The financial representative moniker is an increasingly common job title among leading insurance companies, especially life insurance companies. Though the particulars vary somewhat from firm to firm, the title essentially denotes an insurance sales agent who also acts as an investment broker and/or a financial planner.

Note that this and similar job titles also can be found in other financial services firms outside the insurance sector, such as mutual fund and discount securities brokerage giant Fidelity Investments, to cite just one example.

Licenses and Certifications

The types of securities and investment products that a financial representative has permission to sell depends on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) licenses that he or she holds.

Most firms typically require the FINRA Series 6 and Series 7 General Securities Representative licenses. In addition to insurance policies, one holding a Series 6 license can sell certain packaged investment products such as variable annuities and mutual funds.

Selling a much broader range of investment products, including individual stocks and bonds, demands a Series 7 license, the same basic qualification for a financial advisor in a securities brokerage firm.

Within a given firm, note that some financial representatives can be Series-6 holders while others are Series-7 qualified. Accordingly, despite having the same title, among these producers there can be great variation in the menu of financial products and services that they can offer to their clients, as well as in their levels of knowledge and expertise.

Meanwhile, those offering financial planning services ideally should hold a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation, but a potential client should not presume that this is the case.

Prevalence of the Title

Some of the leading firms that use the financial representative title among their sales forces are large companies, including Northwestern Mutual, John Hancock, Allstate, and Guardian Life.

Compensation

Compensation plans vary by firm and could be a mix of salary, incentive compensation (bonus) and/or commissions. Reflecting a growing trend within the financial services industry, financial representatives may be responsible for a host of expenses, such as for office space, equipment, marketing, and sales materials. This trend is already established for financial advisor pay. On the other hand, firms may cover such expenses and/or promise a minimum pay package for new hires in their first few years of employment in the field, to help them get established.

Finding reliable statistics on average pay is complicated by classification issues. Most notably, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics does not report data on financial representatives. Their most closely-related job categories are financial advisors and insurance sales agents, as well as "Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents." For the latter, median pay as of May 2017 was $63,780 and 90 percent earned between $33,060 and $208,200. The latter figure was up from $187,200 in 2014.

Job Site Findings

According to the websites "Indeed.com" and "Glassdoor.com", the average salary for a "Financial Services Representative" is around $50,000. Glassdoor's figures are derived from rather limited sets of self-reported data from users of that website, and thus, cannot be taken as either comprehensive or authoritative.

Likewise, Indeed's figures are based strictly on current job postings in its system and thus are also far from comprehensive. The average salary quotes on both sites can also be volatile, with ups and downs depending on current listings and user reports.

Not surprisingly, on the recruiting sections of their websites, leading insurance companies generally tout the pay of their top financial representatives (for example, the top 10 percent, top 1,000 or top 100) while being silent about average overall compensation, or average earnings for those in their first few years of service.