Pros
There are good people there who care about helping financial services representatives better ourselves and succeed - our training coordinator being the best example. Decent products to sell. Availability of a general agency and a broker dealer enabled us to sell non-proprietary products if the situation called for it.
Cons
The people who care are few and far between. The branch structure is set up as though it were the personal business of the branch manager. In our branch, the branch manager purchased equipment to set up a call center and then charged reps $200/mo to become "members" who would receive 12 to 16 "guraranteed" appointments per month from the orphan book of business. Unfortunately the appointments rarely stuck. Most often, when they did, it was because the customer had a bone to pick with MetLife and there were rarely opportunities that came out of it. Complaints about the poor quality of the leads or the fact that not all the promised leads were delivered each month fell on deaf ears. So much for the "guarantee". Lots of prep work, personal time, fuel cost, and membership cost with little to no results. The membership money went back into the branch manager's pocket. So, no surprise that, when new sales from the call center really got bad, managers continue to push the call center memberships. The call center was discontinued only when they couldn't convince enough of the reps it was worth their time and money. Also, the general agency was nototious for dropping the ball and loosing us a sale out of pure apathy. Lastly, I grew tired of listening to people tell me how they were helping me when they were just trying to help themselves to a piece of my commissions.