Everything else
1. It's a call center. Managers will say it's not a call center when they want to motivate you to sell more Advice Portfolio but will not hesitate to remind you that it's a call center first and foremost to get you on the phones if the queues get backed up. As an employee at the WAC, you solely work with the accounts that the local branches didn't want (i.e not enough money, temperament issue, etc.). You'll be able to figure out why the branches didn't want many of these clients very quickly. And you can't enroll new clients so you have to tell anyone that may want to invest at UBS to drive themselves to a local branch.
2. You'll spend the vast majority of your day updating email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc because although clients of every other major financial firm allows clients to update this on their website, UBS believes that it is important that these people call in to do it. It's not a secret that UBS is aware that this is the only way that many of these clients would speak with an advisor at UBS but it's not a good look that the clients' statements may be mailed to a complete stranger for years unless they wait in a hold queue for 20+ minutes to speak with an advisor who is much more focused on trying to sell them something they don't want. Countless clients have transferred their accounts for this reason.
3. You'll be asked to do a "call night" every now and then. Call nights mean that you are asked to be in the office as soon as the office opens until the office closes so that you can call as many clients as possible that are avoiding your calls on any other day. The amount of call nights depend on your manager as these look good for the manager but don't frequently benefit you as the advisor.
4. During the interview, it was explained to me that the goal of the WAC was to train the advisor and move them to a local branch in 3-5 years. This very rarely happens. I've seen managers refuse to provide recommendations to move to a local branch on an occasion or two to those that are highly qualified but aren't a favorite in the their eyes
5. If you decide that you no longer want to be an advisor, there are two options for you. Become a support staff/sales manager or leave. No room for growth
6. Management says that they care about diversity but, as far as I know, the first female and non-white managers weren't put in their positions until 2019 although the WAC was created around 2010. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the office was ~80% white men at the time I left
7. Get ready to only try to sell one product, Advice Portfolio (a UBS managed account that neither you or the client can choose any investments in), for your entire time there as that is one of two products that goes towards certain sales goals that you must meet a minimum of in order to be paid anything on your quarterly bonus. Although if any client does a little bit of research, they would see that this product is of lower quality at twice the cost that what they can get at Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, etc. Those that do the research are smart investors and I stopped trying to convince them otherwise pretty early on because they are right and I couldn't convince myself that my bonus is more important than their retirement.
7. Most employees that I'm still in contact with are actively looking for other jobs. Of the ~10 sales managers, there were 4 that left within a two to three month period in 2019-2020. Managers leaving en masse is a bad sign.
8. Having UBS on your resume may be a hindrance outside of UBS. There's a reason most people I know at the UBS WAC are looking for jobs instead of at a new job. It took me over 9 months just to get an interview somewhere else.
If you are looking for a job in the investment industry, there are countless companies that offer more growth opportunities and better investment products in both Charlotte, NC and Weehawken, NJ/ New York, NY
