I don't have wholesalers on investments, because I don't do investments.
Insurance wholesalers are a collection of village idiots mostly, people who failed as advisors or head office cordwood. Best case scenario, they stay out of my way. In fact, I make this very clear when I sign up with an insurance wholesaler. If I need you, I'll ask, and BTW, I don't need you.
They take 20%+ of my override and place impediments and delays in my getting insurance policies to my clients.
The industry justification is twofold; compliance/oversight and education. Education from wholesalers are day long experiences in product flogging. I freakin' hate wholesaler education as they spew whatever they think I should be selling. Compliance? These people don't know what they're talking about. I mentioned something to one of my wholesalers about where's my assistance with FINTRAC and privacy and their response? Yeah, they come in after the fact, when FINTRAC starts to audit. Useless. I know more about fintrac requirements than the compliance department at my wholesaler.
I told my wholesaler recently they were the most in the box people I could think of. He protested, assuring me they were WAAAAY out there with technology. Way ahead of the curve.
OK, so two examples typical of insurance wholesalers.
Ex. 1) the insurance industry right now has a bad habit of sending consumer's personal financial and medical data around by email. Which is going great, until someone's email gets opened up, then we're going to see some changes I guess. Til then.....
So, our office communicates amongst ourselves (admin, reps, etc) by VPN, so securely - not by email. But I don't have that facility with my wholesaler, not practically, and not with our clients (nobody does really). So I want to fix this, by setting up a secure interface where my clients can log in and swap info and data with us, securely. To do that, I wanted a data feed from the companies with policy status. So, company notifies of something, goes to my system, consumer gets an alert email, they login to our secure system, read the alert, and respond securely, and then secure all the way back to the lifeco. Wholesaler's response? No, noooooo, we can't give you a data feed. That'd be hard.
So we're secure internally (unlike most insurance advisors) but can't communicate securely with lifeco's or our clients. Thanks bleeding edge technology wholesaler.
Second ex. I call my wholesaler and say "I have the ability to bring in agents to your business, because I have insurance leads. I'll train the agents how to work with the consumer, make them use you as a wholesaler. All I want is to be paid the difference in commission between what you pay them, and what you pay me, i.e. I take a cut. Seemed reasonable - I use an advantage I have to push business to them, I take a cut. Their response: No thanks. Why? Because they would have to run a report once a month manually and that's too much work. This is the wholesaler that's bleeding edge tech. OK, so no. I carry on.
Then two weeks later the very same wholesaler calls me. They have this new guy they want to recruit. But he wants leads. So, would I be nice enough to give the guy leads, so they can recruit him? Think about that. How do I even respond when I'm told no because it's work, but then get asked to do the same thing for no pay and entirely their benefit? Like I said, cordwood.
Worse, there's a forced consolidation in the wholesaler industry. I remember when everyone and their dog was a wholesaler. Now there's what, 5 that are large enough to have contracts with most of the companies, and they're all homogenous like the banks. And the remaining smaller ones are dying for volume. I've had 4 wholesalers in my office this year already, all promising me anything just to get my volume.
Two thumbs down on insurance wholesalers in general and in specific. Though in their defence, they do tend to mostly stay out of my way these days.