World Financial Group Reviews

Former WFT agent   California

I joint and quit this company after I realized their unethical practices in business and my upliner kept pressing me to recruit&sell to my my close friends and relatives. I almost lost one of my best friends because the MD was so pushy to sell him some life insurance during my so-called field training. A few similar incidents started giving me BAD reputation among my friends. It was a disaster!

The more I worked with these people, the more I felt uncomfortable with. Their agents would recruit anyone who can sell the products regardless of their professional backgrounds. There is zero training on becoming a financial advisor/eductor other than having people repeat some scripts. Every session is about how good the product(universal indexed life insurance) is and no question can be asked(if u raise your question, they would say "talk later"), talking about recruit and more recruit, lambasting those who don't buy the idea or quit are "losers". Most of the so-called agents in the office are non college graduates including restaurant chefs, stay-home moms and grocery workers. I don't mean to look down at them. Some of them barely speak much English, but they were able to pass the life insurance exam. Secret? The upliners actually have some study guides that would guarantee them to pass the exam if they memorize them.

In order to complete the so-called 3-3-30 for a high commission rate, most of the agents did the followings:
1). sell the UIL insurance to themselves and their family members who may not need it at all. Failing to complete the 3-3-30 are regarded as not sharing the same "vision".
2). most of their customers are low incomers who don't even know what 401k and IRA stand for.
3). they just care about making some $.
4). simply use the same script to recruit and sell products to others.
5). most agents have ZERO idea about financial concepts, but they call themselves "advisor", "educator". WTF!!
6). mislead and give out false promise to their clients regarding investment returns.

I was with this company for a few months and I was able to make some sales. After I realized I needed to get out of this before losing all my friends and people who have trust on me, I quit and notified those, who bought the products from me. I even took money out of my own packet to refund them.

If you don't want to lose your friends and relatives, stay away from them!!!!!

Derf Nugget   California

There is no comparison between WFG and Primerica. Primerica is modeled under the principle "buy term invest the difference". How can you compare Primerica when Primerica agents only wanted you to buy insurance that is term, meaning all your paying is flushing down the toilet. Making me invest the difference does not really give any options on how I will not lose my money. All they did is sell me the insurance (term) and I'm on my own if I lose money in an investment. What kind of an option is that? Well, I am not so bitter about Primerica because the time they had my business I did not know any company out there that can give me a better options. I met this WFG representative and did a presentation that made a lot of sense. He also discussed the business side of WFG. After that he said thank you to us for giving him the opportunity to share the information. So I was waiting for the sales pitch and I asked him, aren't you going to sell me your product or recruit me like everyone else out there? He told me that his objective was to share the information wether if I buy or join is all up to me. He would be delighted for me to buy the product but he will only sell the product if it is for me. He told me, if I am interested about the products or joining the business to give him a call. He even told me to research about WFG and the companies they represent and then make an informed decision. I did research it and I found out that WFG is just like any other company. It is always a target. No difference. There will always be unhappy people for whatever reason. It all boils down to, you have to make a decision that will be for your interest. I like what WFG shared with me and they were straight, honest and no beating around the bush. They gave my space. So, I decided to acquire their services. The guy set me up with good financial strategy. I know he did and I compared the products they offer to most investment I have out there. He was able to structure my finances well and he knows what he was talking about. Very knowledgeable. I am 50 y.o. and I own several businesses and I am a CPA (US University). All WFG offers are options that regular people does not know. If you know Math, Accounting, Economics, Investing, Business and Market Trends you will understand the products they offer. I would like to join this company in the future. Currently, I am too busy with my businesses. I think it is a brilliant business flat form. Very Low start up Capital and huge potential ROI. I appreciate WFG for showing me all the products that are available out there. More power to you guys!

Ryan   Calgary

To all those looking to join WFG, research, research, research. I will be the first to admit I am not Warren Buffet and could benefit from additional financial advice. This process if nothing more has opened up my eyes and i think you are reading this for the same reason, to see what other experiences good and bad WFG had provided, and just want some more information. I am just not sure that WFG is properly motivated or its employees educated enough to provide sound financial advice impacting the rest of your life. Regardless of who you are considering to invest with, everyone needs to be aware of the risks involved in this type of business or any investment, big company or not. Remember Sub-prime mortgages ,and remember NO ONE WILL BAIL YOU OUT if things go south.

I recently had a visit from someone from WFG, the first thing I noticed was how difficult it was to get the rep to admit what it was they actually sold. This was a big warning bell for me I had to research online have come to the conclusion the products they sell are brokered insurance policies, retirement plans, mutual funds, debt relief, and they will advise you of different investment strategies all geared toward the products they sell. Again this was crazy to me as to why it was such a big secret and they tried to recruit me before I can even tell what they were selling just using the line "how many people do you think good financial advise could help?" well, I have to agree! approximately 100% of people would like to make good financial decisions.

The biggest complaint I have with this whole process is that I don't think a few weeks training will enable you to be prepared for giving financial advice for the life of the client, it seems to be set up as so anyone can start their "dream" of becoming a financial advisor, unfortunately less than one percent of their employees stay the course and in the mean time if anything goes wrong who do you think your family and friends are going to be mad at if they ever talk to you again. It seems the WFG "financial advisor" has put in the absolute minimum requirements of becoming an advisor by passing the state/provincial exam, and I am not saying they will give you bad advice its just everyone is new and uand likely will not be around in a year or even have enough experience to give educated advice. WFG wants you to put the same stock in someone with a few weeks or months of part time training as the financial advisor who had studied it in a classroom environment over a number of years. Where do you think the greater risk is? Which one has more to loose? the plumber turned financial advisor or the graduated financial advisor?
How much is it worth to you if incorrect investment advise costs you your life savings or your home. How much is that risk worth to you? your family? your friends?

That all being said I will admit that at least this process had got me thinking and researching on my own the different options that are available and what the risks of each option is.

Chris Pratt   Sacramento

WFG IS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE!! People here are only motivated by money!!! You see it as months pass by, all the people you thought cared, only care about the profit they make out of you! DONT TRUST ANYONE IN WFG NO MATTER HOW FRIENDLY IN DISGUISE THEY ARE! Trust your finances with someone who has a degree and has dedicated their life to financial planning! These people care and offer advice out of conversation. WFG will ruin you. Forewarned is forewarned! WFG people are zombies, brainwashed to their very core! Real people in the real world work and study hard for their money & become their own success! Don't be under someone else's success (MLM) cause if you do, your degrading yourself! I love how they always emphasize the "dream speech" because that's all it ever is! WFG IS JUST A DREAM! WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!! Sad to say, but I noticed most Asians are the targeted group, don't know why, but ask any one of them to help for free and pay for your $100 background check and they say they're broke after just 5mins ago, this person was claiming to earn so and so in a month! Really now? Yet this Asian lady doesn't have $100 to spare? And lives in a house by generation to generation after telling me her whole life story and her car breaks down every so often? I can't believe my ears!? If wfg pays her so much then why does her car break down and lives in a house of 16 people!? No wonder her husband left her maybe? She was that desperate, she even said she liked me more than a friend then later busted out this WFG thing when we went to Starbucks after work (we work at the same state job) This is how casually it happens folks! Just giving you an example...

mlama   new york

It is obvious people want to do nothing and get paid. Those people who are complaining are the ones who does not have business mindset. What they have is employee mindset and complaining about $100 background check. Hello folks. Which financial company will allow people without background check. 3 years prior I started working at WFG, I had to pay $200 for background check to work as bar tender. Now Iam in WFG I am my own boss and if I want to earn more of course I have to work hard . Been in business for less than a year and I am doing.g better than my previous job.

Anonymous   Vaughan

2 years ago 2 financial reps came to my house (one of them was a family friend) to sell a life insurance plan for my husband and myself.We were not given a medical and were told that the actual cost of the life insurance was $70 for both of us.

They also wanted us to add another $70 in a separate pool of fund which totaled to $140/monthly. We were told that the extra money we were putting aside we can take out anytime we wanted. "Treat it like a TFSA and use it as an emergency fund..Take it out WHENEVER you like."
2 years pass, I'm losing my job which initiated the phone call to my rep to ask to redeem that extra money we were putting aside. During the span of 2 years, my husband and I saved approximately $2200:.

When I asked my rep to redeem my money he was dumbfounded. I will never forget the look on his face.. He didn't know how to answer and was basically told we cannot take out that money.. "Excuse me?" You can only imagine how me and my husband felt.

We were shocked! We were asking our rep lots of questions and he couldn't answer even one. He had to "double check with another rep." How funny is that. I couldn't believe my ears. 2 years and he still doesn't know what he's selling. He also continued to give us false hope and false information. To make a long story short, this company works as a pyramid scheme. Each time a rep recruits another rep, that rep gets paid commissions.

They are recruiting people that do not know their products and are not educated on the products they sell to innocent people. These reps focus on selling life insurance plans to family and friends without knowing what these plans consist of. They make the plan sound so lovely to the ear but miss to mention the real facts. They just want to sell, sell, sell.

Do not trust this company.

They are a bunch of scammers.

Sjake   New York City

I've read all the reviews here and I disagree with all the one's that put-down WFG. WFG does not do anything outside regular business practices. Someone mentioned Real Estate; there's Avon, H&R Block, Liberty Tax Services; Vector/Cutco, etc. They need people; good people to sell their products. They pay commissions. Some people do not take the time to educate themselves properly before selling, but why do we blame the company; the sponsor; the chain? There are rules of conduct; educational and marketing materials and instructions within each company I mentioned. Access is provided to every agent. You own your own business with WFG which means have a responsibility to educate yourself on each product you propose to sell; support by the company is available. Anyone who looks at running their own chain as a bad business is insecure. Secure means taking a chance on something you may not be sure of at first and pushing yourself to succeed even though people and obstacles try to get in your way. This is the Entrepreneurial spirit and not everyone has this spirit. There is no business in the world other than the Financial Advisory business. You can earn unlimited amounts of money while helping families without putting yourself into debt by first attending a 4-8 year University. People, wake-up to the wonders of what WFG provides you. If you follow the system (like all chains provide), you can be very successful and you can help families be successful as well. Disregard the negatives and be free to be your own employer!

Andy   Toronto

Legit or scam is everyone's personal opinion. Can someone of you anti-wfg guy suggest me any link or article that bans the operation of wfg office Canada wide, if not why you are not making a complaint about the company's operation. I agree there might be some specific case where some wfgites may have done wrong in the transaction..but hey! tell me which organization in the world does the business 100% flawless.....my system analyst was a plumber at some point in his life. So why a truck driver can't be financial advisor...and many taxi drivers happens to be a qualified and experience surgeon, engineer back in their country.

mo   toronto

In this new world there are some people who learnt that use the stupid side of people and WFG is one of them. although they do their best to change the face of their group to a humanity and family base company but if you be a little wise you will never go and work with them. all services they prepare for you is about insurance and some other things that some Banks do it for free and advise you without any money then it's better to use their service instead of them.
I spoke with one of their CEO and ask him some simple question and he try to ignore in front of new people in presentation.
remember the world is changed then the way for trick people is change too and also the way stealing people.
have a good time

chit   California

When someone compares network marketing to a company as the same as pyramid, that's absolute absurd. Company does not ask for money when you want to get job period.

Pierre   BC

It saddens me by the fact that i was taken by this company, whenever i questioned anything that i was not sure about all i got was I will find out and never a real answer this tell me that they are not properly trained and have very lil or no knowledge in the product they sell.

Another life lesson learnt thank god i got my initial investment back but after 4 years no return. then I get my T3 and they input a capital gains that was 3 times more than i actually received. I tried to get an explanation and still ???

Oh well wont happen again

Gordon   Canada

I had a rep visit me the other day. It was hard to keep a straight face during the slick, evasive presentation. Not an 'any' time was it mentioned that they were promoting investment purchase options. I kept saying,"Well, if you don't sell anything or make any money, why are we all here?"

Let's see now...MFG doesn't 'sell' you 'anything.' That is what a rep continually told me. "Have a tried to sell you anything yet?" was repeated innocently. They only provide you with informed options that you can purchase from someone else.
I guess that means that Safeway doesn't sell me food. They simply provide me with food options. I am really paying Heinz for their pork and beans and Safeway is only getting a finder's fee for me purchasing the Heinz product. That's all... Not selling you anything... Not us... (innocent smile).

You have got to be kidding. Laughable double talk at its best.

Just thought of something. The bagging clerk could end up being my financial advisor. Okay, I take it all back!

entrepreneur   tx

I've always been in business for myself. It took me only 6 months with the company to help my first family successfully. I have a newborn daughter & am now confident that I have her college and retirement taken care of through our services.

It's true that it's not a get-rich quick scheme.
It's not for everybody, if it were then everybody would be rich.

The People that complain are the people that have nothing to show for their lives. All talk.

I'd much rather pay for my licenses and app fee and paid what I'm worth than by the hour any day.

People spend upwards of about $1,500 to get schooling and licensing for real estate. Then show a family at least 10-20 houses to maybe get a sale.

It's basically the same thing. In Real Estate, as a broker, you train your agents, which obviously want to eventually become brokers, themselves. When they do, you essentially just trained your competition.

With WFG, you train your brokers, and still get a small percentage of the people you train, that's it!

Charlie   Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Wow! WFG is a disaster. My girlfriend was approached by a friend that had become a WFG Consultant - they had some great conversations, my girlfriend expanded her knowledge of investments and from there decided to take her friends advice and invest using WFG.

The WFG Consultant recommended a TFSA and a Universal Life Insurance policy. At the outset, both investments seemed pretty good - the TFSA was invested in a decent fund and the numbers looked good on using the cash value of the Universal Life Insurance as an investment.

Once the applications were submitted and the documentation arrived the story takes a twist. The MER (management fees) charged on the TFSA turned out to be 3.45%, almost twice as high as is industry standard. This of course is how financial service providers make money, taking commission on sales - WFG sells products with above industry standard fees but people don't realize that unless they have done their research. So, you end up paying more for the same service through WFG.

The big issue though became the Universal Life Policy. It turns out that the WFG Consultant didn't know what she was doing and selected a number of incorrect boxes on the policy application form. The result was the issuance of a policy that had such high cost of insurance fees that my girlfriend would have lost not only all of the cash value in the policy but would have defaulted on the policy itself as she would not have been able to pay the COI as years went by.

When the errors in the policy were brought to the WFG Consultant's attention - she refused to acknowledge the problems with the policy. She was aggressive, manipulative and tried to take advantage of my girlfriend just so she could make her commission (and she was a friend).

While I agree that WFG brings investment and insurance opportunities to a sector of the population that is under serviced - their staff are unqualified to sell the complicated products they offer. They are salespeople not financial advisors. If all they sold were basic investments that couldn't result in massive mistakes like this, it would be no big deal but that isn't the case. WFG's mistakes will cost people their life savings.

Thank you,
Charlie

Stella   California

I really believe that before people post something about WFG they should at least do some research. Most of the negative comments seem to come from people who quit. You have get proper licenses to do the business. WFG is just a platform for someone to build their own business. The beauty about this business is that training comes free to those who wants to succeed. If you own your business it is a necessity to go to the meetings and events so you can grow. You have to recruit, just like any other businesses. The difference with WFG is the team work, you lift someone up so they too can become successful. Its an opportunity, not a scam!! If you grab hold of this wonderful opportunity, then work hard, success will come. If one compares it to a JOB, (Journey of the Broke), then you are on the losing end. With a job, everything that you do is controlled by the company, whereas when you are a business owner, you control your time, your income. We have a great mission to accomplish that is why we recruit. We are dedicated to introducing financial concepts to middle income families typically overlooked by the financial services industry. As entrepreneurs we are committed to helping people and make a difference in their lives. Where do you find the ability to build your own business and be in control of your future. WFG gives people the chance to generate great income, get out of debt and have peace of mind about ones financial future? Yes, some people may make mistakes, but does it make all of us bad? Wr truly believe in what we do, we know its right and we know that we have helped people build and rebuild their financial foundation.

Sally   Canada

I just started working for WFG and I don't sell anything to clients. I simply show clients their options and get a referral fee from the company whose option they choose. How is this a scam? I simply educate families on their financial options as a independent financial advisor. The work you put into it will determine your pay check. I write a provincially regulated test to be licensed. I think this is a great opportunity for those that are hard working and like the flexibility.

Anton   Vancouver

STAY AWAY - Letting a truck driver manage your life finances will not get you anywhere.
And a truck driver is not a metaphor.

Ed   California

Mil Leon California, you noted that it is not a quick get rich thing, however, you are making an extra 5,000-7,000 - isn't this a quick rich scam?

Anonymous   Philadelphia, PA

NEVER EVEN WALK THOUGH THE DOORS. I'm not sure if it's a scam or not but they are beyond pushy. Personally, the way I was raised, I do not like to mix family with business. They harassed me asking me for my family's phone number almost every other day. And if you don't show up for a week, they will bomb your phone. I already work a full time job. After politely resigning, they got every member in the office to contact me. Then they basically scold you how you need to help your family and yourself and they will pull ANYTHING to guilt you into staying. Even if it's the ultimate low.

They are definitely not stable, nor credible. They push to their limits, and it's offensive!

Anonymous   Location unknown

WFG is not at all Like PRIMERICA because PRIMERICA trains and prepares you people to get the license in 30 days and its better in every way...