Fidelity Investments reviews

The best things about Fidelity are also the worst things about Fidelity. 1 ~ If you end up in the wrong department with the wrong boss your life can be a living hell. Fidelity is very liberal in its HR policies which can be good but also means they let things fester for a long time before taking action. There is a percentage of people that will take advantage of this and especially if you are on a small team you may end up constantly covering for a weak link. 2 ~ It is an American dream to start in the mail room and work your way up to VP someday and that is totally possible at Fidelity. In fact, it may be a bit too easy. It is completely common to attend leadership meetings and hear from senior executives "I started on the phones just like you!" Well, that is fine once in a while but at some point you do want people leading you to actually have some training and experience. Fidelity is full of hundreds maybe thousands of Directors, VP's and SVP's that started on the phone "just like you" and it shows. 3 ~ Fidelity has managed to stay out of the news but there are plenty of unsavory things they do behind the scenes. They are currently very worried about the Department of Labor proposed Fiduciary Rule. Their current employer benefits business model is already unethical but if the rule is enacted will be illegal as well. It has long been a major IRA rollover sales lead source to take advantage of relationships with employers to gain access to employees. Fidelity is the world's largest 401k record-keeper and should this lead source be taken away it will be a huge hit to their personal investing sales model in which two thirds of the new assets are from internal rollovers. The Fidelity brokerage business would be nowhere near what it is today without having taken advantage of these workplace business relationships.

- Although micro-management is mentioned in almost every review, I think it stems from not trusting your veteran representatives. Fidelity feels like they have to control people from the top, having branch managers regurgitate sentiments from the top. This also leads to *bleep* rolling downhill. Some managers did prove themselves as good salespeople, but eventually have to drink the Kool-Aid or they won't last long. Either that or they give up because they can't change the system. Other managers were opportunists who rose through the ranks quickly, moving fast enough before people can realize they aren't as good as they appeared. - Compensation: Yes, you can make very good money here, but if you're really good, you can make way more outside. Compensation is figured out ahead of time and they reverse-engineer the compensation plan to get AE's back to target comp. The last couple of years, they've reduced some of the pay, like basis points on new flows, coinciding with the S&P at historical highs. Oddly enough, they had a reduction in force in 2009 because they based payroll on the S&P and had to cut people. So when the market's down, you're screwed, and when the market's up, you're also screwed. Ultimately, you can't keep lying about AE/SAEs being in relationship roles when your compensation is still based on selling products. And this relationship model is 5 years old.