Pros
None worth mentioning, because they'd be outweighed by the cons.
Cons
Most of the cons I've read here coming from other past/current employees are true. But from a broker's (trader's) point of view, my moral and ethical standards could not in the end suffer their advanced training steps starting at about 9 months in, if you survive that long. If you don't survive, the managers don't care, in fact, I think secretly they hope you leave so that they can start milking the much easier to maintain business and corporate clients, and service the repeat business from accounts YOU worked so hard to acquire by endless cold calling, because they too work on commission. In my decades in sales, this is not new. It's all too common, sadly. It's a revolving door for brokers, which I personally witnessed after about a year there. Part of their advanced training was their trying to gradually coax and induce brokers like me into (arguably) unethical practices which to me was tantimount to lying to corporate and other business clients about the real exchange rates within the day or hour, as exchange rates of course are constantly changing (which was supposed to be our 'fall back' so as not to be caught 'misleading' or 'gouging' them as opposed to giving them a fair exchange rate). Naturally, the client should know that any forex service - including at their own bank, can charge whatever they want...whatever they can get away with, so it's 'buyer beware'. It's not illegal. However, to me, it's the presenting your company in your literature, at your website, and training your traders to advertise and keep restating that you have very low rates that are very hard to beat, which borders on the unethical, at least in my books. And if you as a trader ever get cornered or 'caught' by a suspicious client who might be comparing your rates to the competition for this one trade, you're supposed to know the skills of falling back to you last-resort defensive position in the trenches and quoting 'flat' on that trade (no profits/no commission) in the hopes that you won't be put under such pressure or questioned so pointedly on the next trade, when you can start again to prod and probe the client, sense how friendly and relaxed they are, as to how much 'spread' you can get away with going after in this trade and maybe from now on. You are trained to groom the client over time into essentially 'falling asleep' to this idea of letting them compare your quotes with other forex providers rates at any given time of a trade about to be made. For the clients, it's like trying to shoot at a moving target, so you hope they eventually give up and just learn to trust you. That's when you can start making a higher 'spread' on them, and all you can do is pray they'll stay in that job, and never 'wake up' to the fact that you in fact no longer are giving them the good rates you for so long assured them you'd want to do to 'keep their business.' This is simply STUPID as a long term strategy, in my humble view, and very short-sighted, because we kept losing half or more of our clients (the best ones being the smart and more sophisticated clients) because they could go online to reputable online forex websites and monitor world exchange rates in real time even as you are quoting them your 'best rate' over the phone (all done by phone). I lost all my respect over time with management and the company as a whole. There were other devious games they played...too many to list here, which they'd honed to almost 'perfection' such as what I might characterize as this delayed 'bait and switch' game of enticing prospects and the newest clients with no mark-up (we called "spread") or very low mark-up rates to try to get them comfortable dealing with you, but over time traders are taught to sense when they have gained the client's confidence (almost like a 'con' game) , and clients start to learn to trust you to where the other party thinks in his/her mind that 'wow, this company DOES has great rates and treats me fairly', and you HOPE they are no longer checking rates before they call you to make their next Forex trade, and you are expected to try your best psychology and razzle-dazzle fancy footwork methods like changing the subject, avoid giving straight answers, etc, to max out on quoting a rate with as much 'spread' added on as you think you can get away with, and why not?...because you're on commission, and that's supposed to be the way you learn to give yourself a raise, and advance in the company ultimately. Clearly, Corporate training (initial and on-going...in written form, at national sales conferences and phone mentoring from other offices' managers) was the source of these low-standards at the branch office I was with, so you can't just say it was perhaps an isolated incident and the local manager was maybe the only one to blame. It came from the top! So you can guess the ethics levels of brokers ('traders'...we were called) who advance the quickest, make the most money, and stay the longest! Therefore the vast majority of brokers either end up leaving or are wisked out the door with walking papers before a year is up so that they can feed the 'beast' (the managers who also do trades, and maybe one or two of their 'fair-haired' best brokers who've learned to and are willing to play that game) by turning over to them all your hard-won young accounts. And don't think you can just go down the street and get a job with the competition. They will have gotten you to sign before they hire you, a non-competition agreement preventing you from doing that for 2 years. Therefore don't think you can use that training you got as maybe your only benefit of your disappointing tenure with them, unless you want to move out of province. How they've managed to stay in business til now amazes me. Eventually you (and they) can expect to run out of both quality and quantity of prospective clients after this company has 'burned' the market for you as a new recruit. I notice they've changed their name in that time since I was there. I wonder why. Finally, if you're not applying for a job as a 'trader' there, I suppose it's up to you if you think you'd like to work in any role, for a company with this level of corporate practice.
