Sounds like you did your research and laid out a good case to the sponsor. 

  Although I'm sure that you could find a similar or better brokered platform at similar or better costs to participants/sponsor, too, if that was the only thing holding you back from switching b/d's at the time. 

"Ameriprise Changing?"

  I've been at Ameriprise for awhile and here is the most candid response I can offer based on my knowledge and experience with the firm.  Hopefully this will dispel some myths and bring everyone up to date with the firm and its platforms.   1.  Ameriprise is a tale of 2 platforms as someone suggested.  P1 and P2 have now been separated.  To get to the (so called) independent channel you now need to have 20 mil in assets and the independent channel has to pay the employee channel for your book.   2.  You are no longer prodded to sell RiverSource mutual funds.  This dissapeared sometime around late '03 early '04.  With that being said your only option for a managed mutual fund wrap program is through RiverSource.  They keep promissing that a non-proprietary managed mutual fund wrap will come out soon, but I see no reason to do so until the clueless advisors with the firm stop putting money in Active Portfolio's.   The all you can eat wrap account remains the best choice where the advisor can pick thousands of funds, individual stocks, bonds, etf's, uit's, etc... in the account.  The downsides to this account are that the firm takes a haircut from it before it even hits grid, the compliance and rebalancing requirements take a lot of time from the more important task of gathering assets, and the ticket charges for the independent reps are outrageous when compared to LPL, Ray James, etc...   An SMA platform has been introduced and the haircut to advisors was just reduced.  They continue to improve this, but it is still nowhere close to ML, MS, UBS or SB.   3.  We are proprietary when it comes to permanent life insurance and variable annuities.  I agree that the annuity product is pretty good and not too expensive, but it would be nice to have more options.  VUL was (and probably still is in some local offices) mostly an employee platform phenomenon.  In some regions there is this bizzare idea that all clients should be presented wth permanent insurance.  I believe this culture stemmed from the need for branch managers to retain new advisors who they should not have hired because they could not gather enough assets to make it in the business.  VUL thus turned no revenue clients into some revenue clients and helped keep new advisors from failing out.  There is no way you can tell me that someone that qualify's for Roth's should have a VUL.  I think most advisors in the independent channel follow the same philosophy and do not sell many VUL's.   4.  I believe most independants stay with the firm despite the platform limitations because the company does a good job at handcuffing them with the inability to move because of assets stuck in the annuity product and prop insurance.  I can't think of another reason, other than not wanting to re-paper accounts, because these guys/gals take a huge haircut on wrap/REITS/Annuities/Insurance/UIT's etc... compared to other independents.  When you run the numbers 450k in most platforms equates to about 350k at Ameriprise when you factor in these haircuts.   5. Fishbowls are going away.  Now that the employee channel is responsible for its own P&L statement this marketing technique is too expensive (thank god).  This should be totally phased out early next year.  The focus from management on the employee side is to hire people with a legitimate shot to make it in the business based on their current networks and affiliations.  The days of filling seats for filling seats sake seems to be over.  The mandate is that the new reps follow a more traditional model of referral and coi marketing.   6.  There is a national calendar for employee reps.  The clone atmosphere persists in the employee platform even though they are allegedly hiring different people.  I can't imagine real professionals entering this business will put up with being treated this way (not to mention working for a 24k forgivable draw) so I expect this calendar to continue to loosen up.  Mandatory Saturdays have been discontinued as of early '08.  If the firm is able to hire a real national sales manager from outside then I think their first battle will be taking the current management team out of 1990 and bringing them to the present day reality of the business.  They have a lot of folks with a manager title, but very few that are actually able to lead.  With recent compensation changes to their lower level managers and the restructuring of territory for upper level management some would argue that they've damaged the bench of future leaders in the company.  When you have the corporate office people telling the sales people how to manage their time and sell you are inevitably headed in the wrong direction.   7.  Will they ever be able to compete with the big boys?  No because they don't want to pursue the wirehouse business model.  The leadership is 100% invested in the idea of annual financial planning and that being the backbone of the business.  They really want the reps to be more than asset gatherer's and this will always impair the advisors ability to compete with the wirehouses when it comes to being SMA sales people and increasing production based on AUM.  The other issue is that to get the people in place that really know how to compete all the senior leadership that has always been with the firm will need to be replaced and that could take years to get done never mind actually changing the behavior of the reps.  They are sold on the idea that investment management fees will continue to decrease and that financial planning for a fee will be the future of the business.  It is really a contradiction senior leadership seems to be struggling with since I believe they have one of the worst revenue sharing addictions this side of Ed Jones.   The other issue preventing AMP from ever competing is the value proposition to competitive recruits.  The bait they are currently casting is easy to access marketing allowances and an enormous amount of staff support for the level of production people are doing relative to other firms.  The first hurdle in getting beyond this is that 99% of the senior leadership has never been anywhere but AMP.  They don't have the tools to compete with the wirehouse guys because they have no idea how the big boys do business.  If you hear of a real national sales manager coming in and replacing current SVP's and GVP's with people from ML, MS, SB, UBS, Wachovia, BOA then maybe those firms need to take notice.  As long as AMP is run by lifetime AMP people the firm will have no real chance to recruit the brokers they need to be competitive.  If the CEO and Board really cared about change and fixing the employee and independent platform they would own up to the real definition of insanity in this business and stop "having the same people, with the same skills (or lack thereof), doing similar things and expecting different results."  Until the house cleaning takes place the firm will remain a step behind.   Hope this post does some good in dispelling myths and letting people know what is really going on with AMP.

I agree with some of what you wrote, and disagree with some of your opinions. 

  That said, permanent life insurance is not proprietary-only, at least for me.  Not sure if it's based on being a so called "Platinum Advisor" or what, but I can shop all insurance products, except annuities   Maybe I'm drinking the kool-aid, but I think there definitely a niche in annual financial planning.  There's a real contingent out there who want comprehensive advice, and are willing to pay for it (and not just through buying insurance/mutual funds/annuities).  I like being able to offer this service to clients, and if they decide they want me to manage assets and/or provide protection products on top of this, then I have the ability to shop insurers, and have a relatively large stable of investment products to offer.   I also don't see the problem with SPS as you do.  I like the platform, I like the asset-based-fee model, and where it puts monetary incentive.  Yes there is a "Global Fee" haircut.  No one wants a compensation haircut.  It's gone down some as my SPS assets have increased.  It's not a deal breaker for me.   Finally, I've been extremely impressed with the way technology has leaped forward over the last 3 years.  Some of the corporate people said that an independent audit (can't remember from whom, but it was a global consulting firm) reported that when our planned tech upgrades are/were completed, Ameriprise would be the industry leader in advisor technology.  I'm a techie guy, and appreciate this greatly.

Taco - I also agree and disagree with your post. Sounds like you have better access to outside insurance in P2.  Not sure why they can’t open the insurance platform for the employee channel? 

  I think you are right to say there is a place for fee based annual planning and there are clients that prefer to work that way.  With that said I don't think it is the future of the business or more shops would be doing it.  A great tool to have, but not the end all be all arrangement.   I do like SPS and the flexibility it gives you for more complex clients, but we shouldn't be forced to spend our time rebalancing 300k wrap accounts when a simple non-prop managed mutual fund platform could be added to the platform.  If you look at Active Portfolio's performance it is a total joke.  We need the tools to increase our capacity if we are to compete with other advisors out there and the lack of a managed mutual fund platform is a big deal.   The technology has improved, but is still not as good as non-prop stuff on the market.  I went to Minneapolis to see the new navi plan (aka never plan) rollout and I can say that a simple subscription to e money for all advisors would be a much better tool.  Don't even get me started on contact manager as that is the slowest program I've ever seen!   My point is that we have some good stuff in place and have moved forward, but we will never get to the point where we can really compete until some new blood and ideas are brought in from outside.

I’ve spoken to Ameriprise management and also know some of the FA’s. I think Bluehorseshoe’s description is fairly accurate.  Ameriprise recently hired several Bank of America managers to help recruit experienced advisors into P1.  Albeit, BAC managers are not exactly wirehouse managers, but at least there is some understanding of outside platforms. 

There is a huge difference between P1 and P2 advisors and my feeling is that P1 is no longer trying to just fill the seats.  They are even offering transition packages to bring over experienced brokers. My impression of Ameriprise advisors (P1 and P2) is that they are lifers there.  They don't really care nor want to understand outside annuity or insurance products.  I also think their SPS platform is very weak (manually rebalancing is ridiculous) and the SMA haircut is expensive.  That being said, most of the FA's seem happy.  I've seen some hugely successful P2 Ameriprise practices.  Some of the  practices require that the clients have $3 million in investable assets.

We're all entitled to our opinions here, but "ameriwho?," I think you may want to consider seeking professional psychotherapy. 

http://forums.registeredrep.com/search_results_posts.asp?SearchID=20080618094505&KW= (link to all 8 of ameriwho?'s posts, 100% of which are about Ameriprise)   every single post?  can you say: "disgruntled"?