Would you like to know more about how a career selling insurance with First Financial Security Agent Career works?

Perhaps you’ve had an interview or spoken to a representative already, but you’re still on the fence about joining their agency. If this describes you in any way and you would like to discover the truth about First Financial Security, keep reading.

Today, my aim is to answer all of your questions and more in this unbiased First Financial Security Career Review.

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.

Quick Navigation Article Links

• • About

• • Products Sold

• • Leads 101

• • Getting Paid

• • Scam or Legit?

• • My Thoughts

About

First Financial Security (FFS) was founded in 2006 in Johns Creek, Georgia, by Phil Gerlicher and Meg Jones. It is the premier national insurance agency that employs thousands of independent agents across the country and partners with several top-rated insurance carriers.

In 2020, FFS moved its headquarters from Norcross, Georgia, back to Johns Creek.

Products Sold And Market Focus

First Financial Security primarily focuses on meeting the needs of Middle American families.

The company offers annuities and life insurance products, including term life, universal, and whole life policies with living benefits, a rider that allows policyholders to access a portion of the payout while they’re still alive if they’ve been diagnosed with a serious condition.

First Financial Security partners with a number of nationally accredited carriers, such as North American, Columbus Life Insurance Company, National Life Group, United Life, Global Atlantic, and others.

How Leads Work

The First Financial Security website doesn’t provide any information on how its agents find prospects.

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

It is up to every individual agent to increase their pay portfolio. If your sales are high, management will usually provide leads as compensation for your work.

How Getting Paid Works

The payment at First Financial Security is 100% commission-based.

FFS offers training programs for its agents, in addition to the Carriers’ Corner webinar series, Annuity Hour webinars, as well as Get Selling Success Tracks course, which is designed to help agents coach their teams.

The FFS Agent Back Office Dashboard gives insight into the team members’ performance and sales progress. The dashboard allows agents to view the team’s results in real-time, check progress on applications and paperwork, and easily set and evaluate the goals, making any changes if necessary.

Furthermore, FFS provides mentorship and one-on-one coaching to ensure that new team members can start writing business as quickly as possible. Its equal-contract system provides a blueprint for compensation and promotion, with milestones that make it easy to understand exactly how much every individual agent can make.

First Financial Security agents are also provided with two customized websites where both their current and prospective clients can learn about the ways to secure their financial futures.

Finally, FFS offers extensive agent training through a program called Our Success Tracks. Each track is a set of lessons on essential topics from getting started to making the first sale and understanding the compensation system.

Is It A Scam, MLM, Pyramid Scheme?

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

There is very little information available on First Financial Security, and it is unclear whether this is a multi-level marketing (MLM) business opportunity or pyramid scheme.

The company has no financial rating with Better Business Bureau and is not BBB accredited. However, it has good employee ratings.

My Thoughts

Now you know a little more about how a career selling insurance with First Financial Security works, I’d like to provide my experience and knowledge as an insurance agent since 2011 and as an insurance agency owner since 2014.

What follows below isn’t necessarily advice or critique specific to First Financial Security. Instead, it’s general advice that I think all new and aspiring agents should consider before deciding to join a particular insurance agency.

Vesting

Vesting is a crucial concept to understand as a new insurance agent. But more importantly, it’s something that you need to secure from the get-go in your business.

Vesting is defined as ownership. In short, it means that you own the “book of business” that you wrote with the agency, including any cash flow that comes from residual and renewal income.

This is incredibly important to understand. If you don’t have full vestation in your business and decide to quit, you may lose ALL future renewal income from deals you closed. What’s worse is you would have to voluntarily allow the agency you were a part of to keep your future income.

I’m not 100% sure if this is the case with First Financial Security. But I do know that many organizations recruit agents without proper vesting from the get-go. And when those agents quit, they find out the hard way that they lose ALL the commission they were earning from renewals.

Moreover, they weren’t terminated for anything fraudulent or wrong! They simply decided it was time to move forward. They quit on good terms but still lost their renewal income.

I have a friend that works with a very popular captive final expense insurance agency. His contract stipulated that he had to wait two full years before he owned his book of business. TWO YEARS before he could receive his residual commission whether he worked for the agency or not.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a good relationship with the agency manager. They didn’t get along well and certainly didn’t see eye-to-eye. Approximately a month before the 2-year vesting contract stipulation, the agency manager attempted to terminate his contract.

He calculated how much he would lose if terminated—somewhere in the range of $30,000 just over the next year. That’s crazy! Luckily, the termination wasn’t effective, so thankfully, he made it past the two-year wait and became vested in his renewal commissions.

Hopefully, this story demonstrates my point. No one in their right mind would want to find themselves in this position. Agents should be fully vested immediately. We work hard and often pay out of pocket to generate leads and close clientele. In my opinion, agents should own their business for as long as that business pays.

Any organization that tries to take your business contractually due to a vesting clause is most likely not a good partner to consider.

Releases

Another essential concept is understanding how “releases” work. Releases directly relate to the insurance carriers you contract through your agency.

Let’s picture for a moment you decide to join any organization. They put on a good show and demonstrate how they’re going to help you. And you genuinely feel convinced that partnering with them is the right decision.

However, you discover shortly after joining that promises weren’t kept. There’s no support nor hands-on training like you expected. The people you thought would help aren’t fulfilling their obligations. All in all, you’re unsatisfied, disappointed, and want out.

Well, this is where too many agents get caught out. A lot of insurance agencies like to keep this next “trick” under wraps. And it’s easy to see why!

Unless the agency allows, you won’t be able to move any of the carriers that you’ve become accustomed to representing through that agency for at least six months. This means you can’t write business with those carriers no matter what for a full six-month period after joining a new agency!

The only way around this is to get the agency to sign a “release” mentioned above. A release is literally a straightforward legal document that says the agent doesn’t have to wait six months before moving their carriers over.

To me, this should be expected when promises aren’t kept, right? Why would you want to be held hostage by an agency that hasn’t held up their side of the bargain?

This is why my insurance agency and other good insurance agencies will release you upon request as long as you don’t owe chargeback money.

In exchange, this keeps my organization honest. When agents can feel confident they can get a release, they know that particular agency isn’t going to mislead them with false promises and expectations. It keeps the relationship equal and is a clear sign that the agency will provide the training and support you need to become a top agent in the field.

In short, make sure that any organization you decide to join offers a full release if promises aren’t kept, or circumstances change.

Don’t be bashful. Ask upfront if they release. See if you can get something in writing; even an email will suffice. If they start to squirm in their seat upon hearing this question, then they might not be the best agency to join.

Conclusion

I hope this review has given you more insight into how a career opportunity with First Financial Security works.

If you’re interested in other insurance sales opportunities like selling final expense or selling Medicare Advantage, you can check out what my agency—Duford Insurance Group—has to offer on my FAQ page.

We highly encourage new agents to do their due diligence before jumping ahead with any insurance agency. You can even check out my Free Insurance Agent Resource Guide for more information and advice.

Thanks for reading!