WanderingSpirit
New Member
- 14
Greetings Everyone,
I am a former agent of Senior Life Insurance Co. and am participating in this forum to discuss my firsthand experience with them. It is quite long and I hope you all are prepared to read. This is not an attempt to pass off cheap libel against Senior Life or its affiliates. I do have irrefutable evidence to back my claims from contract details to hostile email exchanges.
I am providing detailed information based on working for this outfit for nearly 3 years. The first thing they do is build your hopes up and tell you that you can take home as much as $2,000-$3,000 every week as an Agent and then coerce you into signing a Independent Agent contract that basically indemnifies the company and makes you both legally vulnerable and ill equipped to challenge them in the event of a dispute due to their binding arbitration clause. To make things look real good, they will have agents tell you how much money they were making and how great they are doing, EVEN IF the agent is broke and financially suffering. I was one of those people because I maintained the belief it would turn around for me.
When you are finally in the door, they put you through about a weeks worth of training, teaching you their "trade secrets" at your personal expense and even use agents (myself included) to train their starting agents. I wasn't even compensated for training the new agents (mind you this was during a time I still believed in the company). Once you are trained, they put you on the phone as a licensed insurance telemarketer having you contact people who requested information 5-8 years ago! Great for practice I guess, but not so great if you need to start making money from all the expense you endured from the cost of taking the courses, the exams, the state licensing fees, the office rent, supplies, etc etc etc...
When they determine you are ready, they will give you contacts of people who requested insurance information from about 6 months to 1 year ago. In a way, you are graduating to more current information but are still hurting because most of those people still don't want to talk to you because the information is either wrong, or they already have insurance. By the time an entire month has passed, you are now paying for contact information that is at least 5-30 days current.
This is where they start to nail you. Senior Life Insurance Company OWNS their own marketing agency and charge the agents anywhere from $15-$29 per contact you receive all depending on the type of contact it is and if you DARE question their lead/contact program, they will either verbally thrash you or terminate your contract for thinking outside the box. The contacts are not even exclusive; more often than not, there would be cases of agents receiving the same contacts or the people being contacted would claim they never asked for information.
No matter the negative outcome from a paid contact/lead, you are still responsible for the cost you accrue in contact/lead charges. You spend about an hour on the phone with a prospective client in fear that they may reject your insurance offer for one reason or another and you are out that money. If you are one of the fortunate few like myself that was able to sell 10 out of 20 leads when the average agent would sell 5 out of every 20, you might make a little profit - at least enough to pay your bills, and then the week starts all over again.
Senior Life Insurance Company implemented a rule that Agents were not allowed to order less than 20-25 leads per week. They use the guise that if you order more leads, you will earn more money and make greater profit; but the truth is, they just want to make that money from their advertising. Imagine a company of 500+ active Agents, each Agent spending anywhere from $600-$1000 per week on lead/contact costs - that is a pretty big weekly income for their lead marketing department.
I was promised by my second year in the business, I would be pulling in a 6 digit figure. No matter how hard I worked, or how many hours I put in, or how many leads I ordered - I came up earning only $36,000 in 2008, 2009, 2010 with my lead/contact charges averaging between $16,000-$20,000 a year and that is not including other expenses. I lost money, and a bank account based on their promises of fame, glory, and financial stability. I would work until 11pm attempting to contact clients as if I were working in a Chinese labor camp. My upline manager had his agents sign office agreements that they were to produce no less than $2,500 AP a week, otherwise working the weekend was MANDATORY. 3,500/week minimum if you were a manager. There were incidents that my upline simply sent me an email or facebook message to stay home because of times I may have not been on the phone. How is this even legal?!
The people that make the money are the managers. The managers earn anywhere from 5%-40% override commission on any policy their Agent writes plus 90%-125% commission on any policy they write themselves. Even though managers assume a risk of loss in case an Agent leaves or is terminated by the company, the manager gets to assume that book of business and all commission rights if the incident occurs within the first 2 years (granted anyone can survive that long).
Near the end of August, 2010 - I grew tired of the verbal abuse I was sustaining and opted to leave the office I was working in. My upline manager from that point on started an exchange of hostile emails directed at me when I was simply trying to set up a business from my home office. So much for trying to encourage success.
I lost my father but a few months later in November of 2010 and took a leave of absence from the company. I was devastated because he died in my arms and I could not revive him. It was only a few months later in February 2011 that they terminated my contract for non-production; a NON-EXISTENT termination clause AND locked me out of $30,000 worth of leads that I had already paid for that was kept on their agent terminal online at their website. If I did anything like that to someone, I'd be sitting in jail!
I was averaging between 10,000-15,000 AP issued business every month and even won 2 out of 3 of their 2010 crystal trophies for being top producer. I gave my time, my money, my energy, and my loyalty to that business; and they reciprocated by throwing me into the fire. They promised me security for my family, but I ended up losing everything including time with my family.
They don't pay salary, so there is no such thing as a set income because it is all commission and will hurt you and your family. If you dare try to explain to them you are financially suffering, they will either attempt to convince or WILL convince you that its your own fault and you aren't working hard enough. When I was terminated, I was terminated with no debt with the exception of advance commission debt which my residual income paid it off; and I did continue to receive checks for about $1500, until the dollar amount dropped below $200 - to which they don't have to pay you if its below $200 according to the contract. Another way they get you.
As for being an independent contract or your own boss, the contract itself in writing even admits there are provisions therein that are contrary to that of a independent contractor. How the contract is written up is Senior Life Insurance Co. is generally given so much unilateral control over what you can and can't do - you may as well be selling your soul to the devil. There is absolutely no protection for the agent other than if the agent is smart enough, he will keep a log and record of every encounter he has had with every client, agent, and representative of the company.
Don't waste your time and money with this company. They are not truthful and are a B- company according to Weiss Ratings (and we were told to tell our clients we were an A+ rated company). I have been extremely hurt and deceived by this company. When I first joined in 2008, I was excited and hopeful that I may have a fighting chance to do something with my life after my car accident that almost left me paralyzed. All it takes is real time with that company to discover what they are really about. They are about themselves and their big whigs.
Anyone is welcome to rebut against me in favor of Senior Life, but I promise challenging my thread will be a losing debate. As they always say at Senior Life, you can believe the man or believe the numbers; but always remember, the numbers don't lie.
I am a former agent of Senior Life Insurance Co. and am participating in this forum to discuss my firsthand experience with them. It is quite long and I hope you all are prepared to read. This is not an attempt to pass off cheap libel against Senior Life or its affiliates. I do have irrefutable evidence to back my claims from contract details to hostile email exchanges.
I am providing detailed information based on working for this outfit for nearly 3 years. The first thing they do is build your hopes up and tell you that you can take home as much as $2,000-$3,000 every week as an Agent and then coerce you into signing a Independent Agent contract that basically indemnifies the company and makes you both legally vulnerable and ill equipped to challenge them in the event of a dispute due to their binding arbitration clause. To make things look real good, they will have agents tell you how much money they were making and how great they are doing, EVEN IF the agent is broke and financially suffering. I was one of those people because I maintained the belief it would turn around for me.
When you are finally in the door, they put you through about a weeks worth of training, teaching you their "trade secrets" at your personal expense and even use agents (myself included) to train their starting agents. I wasn't even compensated for training the new agents (mind you this was during a time I still believed in the company). Once you are trained, they put you on the phone as a licensed insurance telemarketer having you contact people who requested information 5-8 years ago! Great for practice I guess, but not so great if you need to start making money from all the expense you endured from the cost of taking the courses, the exams, the state licensing fees, the office rent, supplies, etc etc etc...
When they determine you are ready, they will give you contacts of people who requested insurance information from about 6 months to 1 year ago. In a way, you are graduating to more current information but are still hurting because most of those people still don't want to talk to you because the information is either wrong, or they already have insurance. By the time an entire month has passed, you are now paying for contact information that is at least 5-30 days current.
This is where they start to nail you. Senior Life Insurance Company OWNS their own marketing agency and charge the agents anywhere from $15-$29 per contact you receive all depending on the type of contact it is and if you DARE question their lead/contact program, they will either verbally thrash you or terminate your contract for thinking outside the box. The contacts are not even exclusive; more often than not, there would be cases of agents receiving the same contacts or the people being contacted would claim they never asked for information.
No matter the negative outcome from a paid contact/lead, you are still responsible for the cost you accrue in contact/lead charges. You spend about an hour on the phone with a prospective client in fear that they may reject your insurance offer for one reason or another and you are out that money. If you are one of the fortunate few like myself that was able to sell 10 out of 20 leads when the average agent would sell 5 out of every 20, you might make a little profit - at least enough to pay your bills, and then the week starts all over again.
Senior Life Insurance Company implemented a rule that Agents were not allowed to order less than 20-25 leads per week. They use the guise that if you order more leads, you will earn more money and make greater profit; but the truth is, they just want to make that money from their advertising. Imagine a company of 500+ active Agents, each Agent spending anywhere from $600-$1000 per week on lead/contact costs - that is a pretty big weekly income for their lead marketing department.
I was promised by my second year in the business, I would be pulling in a 6 digit figure. No matter how hard I worked, or how many hours I put in, or how many leads I ordered - I came up earning only $36,000 in 2008, 2009, 2010 with my lead/contact charges averaging between $16,000-$20,000 a year and that is not including other expenses. I lost money, and a bank account based on their promises of fame, glory, and financial stability. I would work until 11pm attempting to contact clients as if I were working in a Chinese labor camp. My upline manager had his agents sign office agreements that they were to produce no less than $2,500 AP a week, otherwise working the weekend was MANDATORY. 3,500/week minimum if you were a manager. There were incidents that my upline simply sent me an email or facebook message to stay home because of times I may have not been on the phone. How is this even legal?!
The people that make the money are the managers. The managers earn anywhere from 5%-40% override commission on any policy their Agent writes plus 90%-125% commission on any policy they write themselves. Even though managers assume a risk of loss in case an Agent leaves or is terminated by the company, the manager gets to assume that book of business and all commission rights if the incident occurs within the first 2 years (granted anyone can survive that long).
Near the end of August, 2010 - I grew tired of the verbal abuse I was sustaining and opted to leave the office I was working in. My upline manager from that point on started an exchange of hostile emails directed at me when I was simply trying to set up a business from my home office. So much for trying to encourage success.
I lost my father but a few months later in November of 2010 and took a leave of absence from the company. I was devastated because he died in my arms and I could not revive him. It was only a few months later in February 2011 that they terminated my contract for non-production; a NON-EXISTENT termination clause AND locked me out of $30,000 worth of leads that I had already paid for that was kept on their agent terminal online at their website. If I did anything like that to someone, I'd be sitting in jail!
I was averaging between 10,000-15,000 AP issued business every month and even won 2 out of 3 of their 2010 crystal trophies for being top producer. I gave my time, my money, my energy, and my loyalty to that business; and they reciprocated by throwing me into the fire. They promised me security for my family, but I ended up losing everything including time with my family.
They don't pay salary, so there is no such thing as a set income because it is all commission and will hurt you and your family. If you dare try to explain to them you are financially suffering, they will either attempt to convince or WILL convince you that its your own fault and you aren't working hard enough. When I was terminated, I was terminated with no debt with the exception of advance commission debt which my residual income paid it off; and I did continue to receive checks for about $1500, until the dollar amount dropped below $200 - to which they don't have to pay you if its below $200 according to the contract. Another way they get you.
As for being an independent contract or your own boss, the contract itself in writing even admits there are provisions therein that are contrary to that of a independent contractor. How the contract is written up is Senior Life Insurance Co. is generally given so much unilateral control over what you can and can't do - you may as well be selling your soul to the devil. There is absolutely no protection for the agent other than if the agent is smart enough, he will keep a log and record of every encounter he has had with every client, agent, and representative of the company.
Don't waste your time and money with this company. They are not truthful and are a B- company according to Weiss Ratings (and we were told to tell our clients we were an A+ rated company). I have been extremely hurt and deceived by this company. When I first joined in 2008, I was excited and hopeful that I may have a fighting chance to do something with my life after my car accident that almost left me paralyzed. All it takes is real time with that company to discover what they are really about. They are about themselves and their big whigs.
Anyone is welcome to rebut against me in favor of Senior Life, but I promise challenging my thread will be a losing debate. As they always say at Senior Life, you can believe the man or believe the numbers; but always remember, the numbers don't lie.
