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WSO Free Modeling Series - Now Open Through
May 31, 2024
9 Free Financial Modeling Lessons
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
If you’re trying to break into corporate finance (IB, corp banking, FP&A, corp dev, etc) then this internship will provide absolutely zero value to you in terms of transferable skills
If you want to sell life insurance, then go for it. No judgement on wanting to do that, but I just want to be clear that this internship will serve you no benefit for transferring to a more traditional finance job. This is strictly a sales role, and you’ll have to be okay calling family members, friends, strangers, literally everyone. I couldn’t do it, but if cold calling / sales type work excites you, then all the power to you
I know someone who works there who actually has a big book of business and seems to be doing pretty solid
Doing well in the life insurance racket means you've lasted long enough to become "partner" and get to collect a cut of the production generated from any salespeople you recruit.
Run. Run far and run fast.
NW has a reputation in WM that's not that hot. We're not talking Primerica 'cash out your pension to buy a VA' bad, but pretty close. Most of our products can't be sold there because we don't charge enough to pay their kick-backs even if we wanted to. (We're a household name shop)
If you want a career in WM, it is not a bad stepping stone if you can't get an internship at a wirehouse like MS, ML or UBS. There's also a lot of positives about a career in WM. You don't work long hours once you're established, and you play a lot of golf.* The pay ain't bad either. A decade ago it wasn't uncommon for a good ML FA to make $500k-$1m. it's not "finance" though. it's sales and customer service. There are FAs that are really passionate about finance, and ones that can barely tell you the difference between a stock and a bond.
*be aware, it's eat what you kill and the fail-out rate is 90%+
I think that 90% fail-out rate can be misleading. The reason is that I think almost all of that results from people that just realize it isn't for them so they quit. It's not that those 90% are really trying and putting the time in but still failing. If it's what you want to do and you put the time in, I actually think the success rate is pretty solid. (Talking about WM in general here, not Northwestern)
So I'll add my experience: I had a less-than-ideal GPA and not a lot of knowledge about finance. I applied and did the phone screen and then went to one of their downtown offices to interview with a couple of WM people. Obviously it went well because they want warm bodies with contacts to sell to. I was a bit suspicious, but ended up drawing the line when the HR person reached out and said they would love to have me during the summer AND I'll I had to do was send them a list of *100* people I knew with first and last names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Essentially I was sending them my call list for summer. I noped out of that SO FAST. I could not imagine turning over list of my family members, contacts, etc to NM to have and store in their system. Icky. I was able to land something else that was not super ideal (not paid), but was ultimately more helpful for my career. I understand the privilege of being able to work for free, but I'll also add the NM's pay wasn't great either and half of the stipend (which was the only guaranteed pay) was contingent on passing some exam or something. (Specific details are foggy as this was a few years ago).
In hindsight, it seems like a predatory growth strategy for NM...get a bunch of kids who want to break into finance (and who may not have the connections and/or experience to understand how to do so) and then tell them they have an offer and to "just send their call list as their first project." Honestly, the experience changed my opinion of NM for the worse and I strongly advise anyone to not pursue this. However, if you can't find anything else and are actually interested in WM, make the best of it. Happy to be more specific if you have more Qs....this is a topic I'm passionate about.
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