Insurance Agent vs. Investment Advisor: Which Is Best For Your Career?

With countless paths available to you as a financial advisor, it might be hard to navigate where you want your career to go. Insurance sales and/or investment sales are two of the buckets where advisors typically tend to spend the bulk of their career.

Here at Consolidated Planning, financial advisors focus on insurance, investments, and cash flow with the goal to provide a balanced financial plan for each and every client.

The trajectory of your career is dependent upon the path you choose. Whether that’s insurance, investments, or a merriment of the two, you will benefit from learning the benefits and downsides of these paths to best determine what is important to you in building a successful financial advising practice.

What’s The Difference Between An Insurance Agent And An Investment Advisor?

The term financial advisor is often a catch-all phrase that can include many types of advisors providing financial services. However, there are differences in the advisors that fall into this catch-all bucket. Let’s look at two recognizable types of professionals in the industry – Insurance and Investment advisors.

What do these types of professionals look like and how do you know which is best for your career?

As an insurance agent, you are the intermediary that bridges the gap between insurance companies and policyholders. You will learn complex details of insurance policies and provide a  suitable plan for your client’s needs.

 

What Are The Benefits of Being An Insurance Agent?

#1 Simplified Sales Process

In a career as an insurance agent, you’re likely only selling one thing, one product. In that sense, your sales process is typically easier with no coordination between products.

#2 No Product Complexity

You are a master of one product, not a collection of financial services. With one product to focus on, you will spend less time learning and getting up to speed in the industry.

#3 Focused Career

Your sole focus will be on insurance-related items, creating a more focused career. You may earn more revenue off of insurance than you would have otherwise, being dually focused.

As an investment advisor, you choose, manage and recommend investments for your clients.

 

What Are The Benefits of Being An Investment Advisor?

#1 Recurring Income

In a career as an investment advisor, you will reap the benefits of compounding revenue over-time based on the assets that you are managing. 

As markets grow, your client’s investments will grow, and your advisory fees may grow. Over a decade it’s reasonable to expect markets to grow, and therefore your advisory revenue to grow. (Great news).

#2 Focused Career

Your sole focus is on investment-related items, creating a more focused practice, and perhaps a simpler one too. Since you don’t have much insurance revenue as an investment-focused advisor, you’ll probably need to do more investments to make up the difference in revenue.

#3 Easier Practice Management

With each portfolio including investments only, there is far less coordination between products, making the back office practice management easier.

Your clients can often tell from your very first encounter what the product offering will be, and again, it’s often a transactional one.

 

Drawbacks of Being An Insurance Agent OR Investment Advisor

Being an Insurance Agent OR Investment Advisor will, by nature, make you more transactional.

 

#1 Harder To Grow Exponentially

If your main revenue is only from insurance or investments, you only have income fees from one type of product. Your revenue from the beginning (and as you grow) won’t be as diverse as it would otherwise be. With that, you’ll need more product revenue to make up the difference.  If you’re looking to grow your career at a faster pace, two revenue streams are better than one.

#2 More Clients

More. More. More. If you only provide insurance or investments, you are earning less money per household. Depending on your goals, you will need more clients to make more money. Now, being a financial advisor is about more than just making money BUT this does mean more of your time is spent running after new clients and more frequent transactions. 

For this reason, insurance or investment only advisors unintentionally transact and move on. Not because they necessarily want to, but because they need to.

#3 Clients Typically Want One Advisor

By the time most consumers hit middle age, they potentially have several insurance and investment advisors in their life. Oftentimes, these transactions leave the client responsible to organize and coordinate their financial future. 

To avoid juggling with multiple transactions and multiple agents and advisors, most consumers want one financial advisor in their life. We think that consumers are constantly looking for that one financial advisor to lead them. Not the other way around.

Ask yourself, what would you want as a consumer?

 

Should You Focus on Both Insurance and Investments In Your Financial Career?

Maybe you didn’t realize that you can have it all – you can choose to be both an insurance agent and an investment advisor. And you can do it well.

When you lead with planning, the products naturally follow. This means looking beyond a single policy or portfolio to create balance across protection, savings, cash flow, investments, and retirement.

For an approach that changes how you serve your clients AND the trajectory of your career, reach out to a team member at Consolidated Planning on becoming an advisor who helps clients organize their financial world, protect what matters most, and plan confidently for the future.

 

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Exp. 10/2027

Consolidated Planning, Inc. is an Agency of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. Securities products and advisory services offered through Park Avenue Securities LLC (PAS), member FINRA, SIPC. OSJ: 6115 Park South Drive, Suite 200, Charlotte NC 28210, Phone # 704-5528507. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. This firm is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS. This material is intended for general use. By providing this content Park Avenue Securities LLC and your financial representative are not undertaking to provide investment advice or make a recommendation for a specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity.