Are you considering a career selling insurance with Appreciation Financial Agent Career?

Perhaps you’ve had an interview or are thinking of scheduling one and you are doing research to find out the truth about a Appreciation Financial Agent Career.

Even if you haven’t been tested for your insurance license yet, if this describes you, you’ve found the right article!

In this Appreciation Financial Agent Career Review I’ll answer your questions with a fair and balanced analysis so you can make a confident decision as to whether they are a good fit for you.

Let’s begin.

PS: Check out my insurance sales jobs reviews of other agencies for more information.

NOTE: Are you an aspiring or new insurance agent looking for more insight into how the insurance sales industry works? Check out my Free Insurance Agent Resource Guide [NEW] to help answer many of your questions (as well as ones you didn’t know you had!).

Quick Navigation Article Links

• • About

• • Products

• • How Leads Work

• • Pay

• • Scam, MLM, Pyramid Scheme?

• • My Thoughts

About Appreciation Financial

Appreciation Financial is an insurance and retirement planning company founded by Terry Kennedy in 2009. Over the years, the company has grown to become the national leader in retirement and financial planning for public employees.  

Appreciation Financial is headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, with branch locations in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Washington. The agency employs close to one thousand financial professionals.

Appreciation financial partners with top national insurance carriers, including:

• • National Life Group,

• • Great American Insurance Group,

• • Jackson,

• • Fidelity & Guaranty Life,

• • Mutual of Omaha,

• • Protective,

• • North American Company for Life and Health Insurance,

• • American Equity,

• • Allianz,

• • Midland National, and

• • Voya Financial.

Products Sold And Market Focus

Appreciation Financial specializes in retirement planning and life insurance with living benefits.

The company focuses on the 403(b) public employee niche. It serves the unique needs of teachers and public servants and their families.

Its mission is to help customers save money for a better quality lifestyle and increased financial freedom, and ensure a comfortable retirement.

How Leads Work

The company website doesn’t provide information on how its agents find prospects.

However, if you are a new agent working for Appreciation Financial, you will most likely have to start by cold calling for prospects or work with friends and family for referrals and sales opportunities.

How Getting Paid Works

Like most insurance companies, Appreciation Financial doesn’t publish its commissions for agents. As an independent insurance agent, you can expect to be paid a small salary with a commission and a possible bonus.

The company provides all its team members with extensive personal and professional training opportunities to help them understand and solve the specific problems that public servants face.

Besides training, agents have the possibility to participate in annual national conventions, sales contests, and incentive trips.

They benefit from competitive pay, business ownership, residual income, and are a part of a culture of growth, development, and support.

The Appreciation Financial New Business Concierge system allows agents to focus on writing business while support members handle all the back-end administrative tasks and communicate with carriers.

A personal development and goal setting workshop known as Power Hour is held weekly at the Appreciation Financial headquarters office in Henderson and is led by the CEO Terry Kennedy.

Is It A Scam, MLM, Pyramid Scheme?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfQiJ8Db6xo&t=21s

Appreciation Financial is not a scam. It is a legitimate company with excellent financial ratings. It holds a superior A+ rating with BBB.

The agency has received numerous awards such as Gold Company of the Year-West U.S. in 2020, the 10th annual Best in Biz award, two 2020 GOLD Stevie awards, as well as the Gold Entrepreneur/Founder of the Year award.

Appreciation Financial was named #1583 on the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. They were also featured in numerous publications including Reader’s Digest, Business Insider, US News & World Report, Time, Finance and Markets, and more.

Appreciation Financial is not a multi-level marketing (MLM) business opportunity or pyramid scheme. The company doesn’t have multiple layers of agents, mentors, and trainers and is not suitable for agents who are primarily looking to recruit.

My Thoughts

Now that you know a little more about how the Appreciation Financial insurance sales opportunity works, I’d like to offer my perspective.

As an independent agency owner that’s been in business since 2011, helping people in the final expense, Medicare, and Annuity World nationally, there are a few things I’d like for you to consider.

Vesting and Releases

Since many of you are likely new to insurance sales and quite possibly don’t even have your license yet, I think it’s important to go over a few factors that, although they may not be related to Appreciation Financial, are still crucial to understand.

First, I believe agents should be 100% vested in your book of business from day one.

Vesting refers to owning your book of business (previous clientele) and the continuous income that flows from them. Ideally, you want to be fully vested from day one! You do not want to suffer through a long waiting period before you’re fully vested.

Why? Because if your position is terminated for any reason, then you’ll lose either all or some of your commission and renewals, depending on how the vesting contract reads.

Many companies take advantage of this and look to get rid of agents before their vesting waiting period ends. Unfortunately, this is almost standard practice. Allowing new agents to be 100% vested is simply not as common with big brand name companies as we’d like to see.

And while I’m not sure whether Appreciation Financial allows new agents to own their book of business from day one or not, I do know that many other large organizations that recruit heavily enforce a vesting waiting period.

For instance, I know of one major organization that makes its agents wait a year before they’re fully vested. There’s another one that constantly recruits and has a 10-year scale before any commission is fully vested.

I’ve never been fond of this approach. Ultimately, agents even within an organization are responsible for generating leads, finding prospects, and closing the sale.

Since it’s up to you to acquire the lead yourself, I think any and all commissions should be paid to you in full.

My advice? Make sure you ask an Appreciation Financial representative about how vesting in their agency works.

In fact, you should do this no matter the organization you’re looking at. The last thing you want is to find out after taking the position that you’re losing money that should be yours.

 Releases

“Releases” refers to moving your insurance carrier contracts from one agency to another.

Some organizations like mine offer this opportunity, but there are others that will never allow you to switch your carriers over to another agency.

Why? To be honest, I don’t know why. I guess some organizations want to make it difficult for you to leave even if the job isn’t to your liking.

Everyone knows there are all sorts of sales opportunities out there advertised as the greatest thing since sliced bread but they turn out to be a complete waste of time.

That’s why it’s so important that every agency releases your carriers to you. It levels the playing field and gives you the freedom to leave whenever you decide it’s time to move forward.

For the record, I don’t know whether or not Appreciation Financial actually releases. But it is something that you should ask them. After all, being released is a fair proposition that all organizations should offer.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this review on how a career selling insurance works with Appreciation Financial. Hopefully, it provided insight into the company, as well as a commentary on how the insurance sales business works in general.

In fact, I recommend that agents do their due diligence before joining any insurance sales opportunity. That’s why I put together a Free Insurance Agent Resource that answers a lot of questions and some that you didn’t even know you had!

If you’d like to find out more about how my agency—Duford Insurance Group—works, there’s more information on my FAQ page.