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Ameriprise Competitors: Raymond James, Edward Jones, UBS
2024 Raymond James and Ameriprise competitors. Ameriprise Financial rivals at wealth
management, investment advisors, and full service brokerage services.
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Ameriprise Competitors
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Ameriprise Overview
Ameriprise Financial is now an independent financial services holding company based in Minnesota that includes the former IDS (Investors Diversified Services), RiverSource Life Insurance Company, Columbia Management, J. & W. Seligman & Company and H &R Block Financial Advisors.
IDS was previously acquired by American Express in 1984, who leveraged the latest IBM technology, then spun out in 2005 leaving Ameriprise for many years without state-of-the art technology at the time discount brokerages began to exploit the Internet. Therefore, the Ameriprise retail customer website is less sophisticated with less functionality than most retail investment firms like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley or discount brokers like Schwab, Fidelity, eTrade or Interactive Brokers.
Ameriprise offers fee-based financial planning services and distributes insurance products to clients of all income levels primarily through its own network of corporate financial advisors and independent financial advisors, most of whom are Registered Investment Advisors a.k.a. RIA’s.
Many Ameriprise advisors, both corporate and independent, hold the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional certification, which generally requires their adherence to the fiduciary standard, i.e. they must place their clients’ interests ahead of their own. Therefore, Ameriprise CFP® professionals must fully disclose their financial planning fees (financial plans are not free at Ameriprise) and commissions on the sale of its RiverSource life insurance products and annuities. As a result, Ameriprise has designed its entire financial planning platform to align closely with the CFP Board’s official financial planning process and support its financial planners’ relationship with their clients, rather than serving “do-it-yourself” clients.
Ameriprise Weaknesses
The primary weakness in Ameriprise’s website and financial service offerings emanates from its history as a roll-up of an insurance company, mutual fund company and financial advisors prior to and following its acquisition by American Express and subsequent spin-out. This history and current strategic direction is reflected in the website’s relationship marketing focus vs selfservice.
Secondly, because Ameriprise is dedicated to its fee-based financial planning advisor relationships, its abundant, user-friendly, well-intentioned financial literacy and planning tools mask the underlying message that further engagement will require a fee-based planning contract, beginning with paying an Ameriprise advisor to gather and analyze significant amounts of the user’s information before recommending which financial planning steps the user can choose.
Third, while Ameriprise claims to offer an “open architecture” platform across all markets and providers, historically it favors its own in-house insurance company’s products over competitor offerings. For example, RiverSource insurance and annuity products are deeply entrenched in
their advisors’ risk assessment tools and compensation structure so that insurance quotes are almost always, i.e. automatically, one of the primary recommendations for any financial plan. These insurance and annuity products have multiple layers of complicated fees, usually paid to the advisor up-front at the time of client purchase, which are disclosed in overwhelmingly detailed fine print, yet only lightly explained at the time of financial planning recommendations.
Ameriprise also has a long and checkered history of malfeasance, regulatory troubles and fines, such as for delivering pre-packaged, boiler-plate financial plans to clients due to its intense sales quota and commission pressures typical of a boiler-room insurance company. Like most investment firms, a prospective client need only search online for “Ameriprise complaints” to reveal the horrifying down-side experienced by too many clients.
Updated on 1/19/2024.
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