Primerica – Legitimate Home-Based Business Opportunity
There has been some buzz about Primerica in recent months and whether or not it is a legitimate company. There have been blogs written ranting against Primerica and the complaint board is full of people who are not very happy. With the current state of the economy, more and more are looking for second and even third incomes to help them get by. Enter Primerica Financial Services, which has been looking for potential business representatives in huge numbers, and this story begins.
My disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Primerica in any way, shape or form. I happened upon a website full of complaints and accusations against Primerica, and decided to look a little further into the company- how they recruit, how they operate, and why some people seem so down on them.
What I found is this:
Primerica Financial Services is a multi-level marketing business opportunity, and I emphasize “business opportunity” here. It affords people the opportunity to make good money selling their services. They are a publicly held, publicly traded company, owned by Citigroup, and have been around for approximately 30 years. They sell life insurance policies, annuities, mutual funds, etc.
Primerica uses various recruitment methods, but the most egregious method seems to be when an agent calls a candidate for a potential “job interview”. This is happening to people who have posted their resume online. An agent makes contact, does a quick “interview” over the phone, says their resume looks promising and they feel the candidate would be a great fit for the company. Then the agent sets up a time and place for an “interview.” These are not interviews, but more like recruitment meetings. While in the “interview”, candidates are finding out that Primerica is a Multi-level marketing system. There is also a small fee to be paid by the candidate for joining. Most people hear this and immediately feel that Primerica is a scam because “no one would pay money to start a job,” as one online poster put it. But, there is training involved, licenses to be obtained, fingerprinting to be done, etc. The confusion comes in when people think they are being offered a job and find out that they are, in fact, being offered the opportunity to have their own home-based business. It doesn’t mean Primerica is running a “scam,” but it does mean that they should be more transparent up front.
Although many people object to the manner in which Primerica gets people in to their “interviews”, they recruit this way because they need massive numbers of potential candidates. Many people will not make it in the MLM world. It is hard work. Sometimes it is much easier to head for your 9-5 job than it is to work at your own business.
Primerica does not promise that you will get rich quick. They tell you that you have the potential to earn a lot of money if you join. How hard you work and what you earn are up to you. Do you have the potential to earn great money doing what you currently do? Do you have the potential to set your own earnings, meaning you determine how much you will make based on how hard you work? Do you have the flexibility to set your own appointments, work as many hours as you would like, work from home? If you are like most people, probably not. You earn a wage, you may or may not get a 3-5% raise annually, you do what your boss tells you to do, and you probably can’t work from home.
Although Primerica is certainly not for everyone, it is certainly not a scam. You may end up working as hard or even harder than you did working your 9-5 job. However, you will be working for yourself, and will have the rewards and flexibility that come along with owning your own business.
