Expecting to be financial advisers at the Fortune 500 firm, some hires say they were ‘gaslit’ into peddling ‘terrible’ life insurance to all their contactsNorthwestern Mutual likes to think of itself as a storied American institution offering specialized financial advice,The 168-year-old financial giant, ranked 109 on the Fortune 500, and regularly anointed one of the World’s Most Admired Companies by the magazine, describes its financial advisers as “expert listeners” or a “trusted partner who helps you continue to reach goal after goal”,It also tops Forbes’s list of Best Employers for New Grads, a title that makes it attractive to hundreds of college students desperate for an internship that could launch them into a career in financial services,Each year they file into Northwestern’s glassy offices across the country for a three-month internship that they hope could change their lives,There, they are slotted in beside thousands of full-time “financial representatives”, many of them recent graduates themselves.

In the corridors of America’s colleges and business schools, Northwestern recruiters push the dream of a blue chip career in finance.Posters appear with slogans like: The Career You Want at a Company You’ll Love.Recruiters in polo shirts sit at tables asking students if they would like to be financial advisers.Job ads for these positions, posted on sites like LinkedIn, describe “performance-based pay” and “uncapped earnings for the entrepreneurial”, phrases that shimmer with vague promises of potential wealth.When Jeremy Biar, a senior at Texas A&M University, spotted one of these booths, one with a big laminated placard that read Northwestern Mutual, he was relieved.

He had yet to organise a summer internship and was glad when the recruiters began courting him.After expressing his interest, Jeremy attended an event organised by Northwestern at a nearby Hilton hotel.Inside a carpeted conference room, 50 or so students huddled around cocktail tables, nibbling hors doeuvres, lining up for headshots.Speakers extolled the joys of being a financial adviser at such a coveted firm.“They get you into the funnel of ‘let me sell you the dream,’” Jeremy says.

But when it came to the interview for his internship, the questions felt more like a fraternity recruitment.How big was his family? What did his parents do? Where did he go to high school? He was sent away with “market information surveys” to complete.The worksheets, seen by the Guardian, required Jeremy to interview 10 friends or family members about their finances – listing their names, occupations, phone numbers, and asking each of them to refer him to 10 more people he could contact about their financial planning.It all struck Jeremy as odd, was that how blue-chip financial services firms operated? He wasn’t sure, it was his first-ever job interview.So he completed the surveys and was offered a spot interning at Northwestern’s office in College Station, Texas, with 20 or so other students.

On his first day, dressed in a navy blue suit and tie, he felt “hopeful and full of vision”.The training began immediately, but there were no crash courses in mutual funds or market trends.Instead, the new recruits were told to take out their phones, open their contacts, and upload at least 200 names into company software.Then start calling.The goal: 40 dials a day, documents seen by the Guardian show.

Friends, cousins, ex-roommates, teammates, anyone who might answer.Jeremy was told to leave 20 missed calls at a time so it looked “urgent”.When someone finally picked up, there was a script to follow: a cheerful announcement of his new role, followed by an invitation to meet and discuss their financial future.If the person on the phone agrees to meet, their financials are input into Northwestern’s software, which spits out a financial plan.Invariably, it will recommend the most expensive life insurance product, known as “whole life”, according to internal documents and interviews with workers.

A more senior adviser typically joins the call and gets half the commission,Reps have quotas for these meetings, according to 14 sources, and an internal document from the New York office, that requests five new bookings per week,The Guardian spoke with 21 current and former Northwestern workers (plus five who interviewed to be and didn’t end up taking the role) across nine states, who told strikingly similar stories,Recruitment, they said, is a decoy for harvesting contacts,Reps are not being groomed as future financial advisers, they claim, but pushed to sell life insurance to friends and family.

One graduate, George, recalls selling a life insurance policy to his teenage brother – then being scolded for not making it pricier.Sophomore Kyle* says he was urged to buy a policy himself just to meet quota.Max, a college junior, bought one too – hoping it would boost his chances of winning a trip to New York.Another, Sarah*, drained her own savings to keep afloat as a rep for four months after college, long enough to sell a whole life insurance policy to her sister.Graduate Megan* was asked daily if she had sold to her parents yet.

Refusing to, she would be asked in weekly meetings: do you not care about helping people?“I felt gaslit,” she says, describing the culture as “cultlike”.“I don’t believe they’re recruiting people to succeed in a career,” says David*, a Northwestern adviser of 15 years.He thinks they are instead using young students and graduates to get new sales leads: “It’s gathering immense data and not paying for it.”Northwestern’s talk of big earnings is what draws reps in.The top quartile earn nearly $200,000 annually during their first three years, their job ads claim.

But despite Northwestern’s six-figure promises in their job ads, in reality, most reps earn little before dropping out, often leaving loved ones stuck with insurance policies they do not need.Clint came across an ad while at business school in Michigan, where money had become a “toxic” obsession, with such influencers as Grant Cardone and Andrew Tate glamorizing passive income over a traditional salary.Against that backdrop Northwestern’s promise of hard work and high salaries felt like self-actualization.“I was excited at first.I felt like there was a potential career in personal finance in front of me,” says Clint.

“But the rose-tinted glasses quickly came off,”A Northwestern spokesperson told the Guardian: “Our profession isn’t always easy, as it requires a tremendous amount of hard work, grit and perseverance,Understandably, it isn’t for everyone,” But, for those with “vision, drive and an entrepreneurial spirit” it can pay off,Reps receive “award-winning training” and 94% say the internship “helped them grow personally and professionally”, according to an internal survey.

Whether the recruits were misled or simply naive is open to debate,But there is also real concern for potential clients of Northwestern, the ones promised financial advice from “expert listeners” on the company’s website,Should America’s largest life insurer be sending students and recent graduates to sell complex financial products like they were boxes of Girl Scout cookies?Jeremy, the Texas A&M graduate, stuck with his internship despite being asked to harass his friends and family,But over the course of the internship, the office grew quieter,Without warning, interns stopped coming in.

After one month, about 80% had dropped out, says Jeremy.Those left standing would simply chalk it up to the others’ inability to “make it” as an adviser.Even as numbers dwindle, Northwestern flames rivalry to keep reps dialling.“It felt like the survival of the fittest,” says Jeremy.At weekly meetings, rooms erupt with heckles, as a leaderboard ranks reps by policies sold, meetings booked and calls made.

“Public shamings,” David calls them.Those who failed to hit quota look dejected, recalls former adviser Cole*, who worked at Northwestern for four years.With their eyes turned to the table, they would commit to trying harder next week, he says.The top performers were rewarded with trips, dinners and baseball tickets, he adds.Reps were also pressed to “prove conviction” by buying policies themselves, four sources said.

Jeremy rapidly established himself as his class’s alpha.He wasn’t squeamish about hounding his contacts.He wasn’t earning anything close to a living wage, but his dogged approach meant he was able to sell life insurance to seven college friends – including one $6,000-a-year plan.And that put him in a league of his own.By the end of the internship, he was the only one left standing and accepted an invitation to stay on as a full-time rep after graduation.

But surviving Northwestern came at a price.“You’re not making any money and you can’t afford to live.You’re either racking up debt, or you’re living with parents,” he says.“It’s easy to get pretty desperate, pretty quickly.”Financial precarity coupled with a fierce sales culture left Jeremy feeling shameless.

Every interaction a friend had with him carried the risk of a sales pitch.Friday night plans became less frequent.People at his church avoided eye contact.“Most of your friends end up blocking your number,” he says.Finding himself at the margins, Jeremy dug deeper into his echo chamber.

“Trust the training and direction of Northwestern,” was his mantra,Topping the leaderboard became his north star; dial, book, sell, refer and it would all work out, he told himself,“You turn into a stoic human being,You really have to choose your Northwestern career over the friendships that you used to have,”What exactly do Northwestern want young guns like Jeremy to sell? While working as a Northwestern looks similar to a lot of insurance sales gigs, the product reps are particularly complex: whole life insurance.

Whole life insurance offers lifelong coverage with fixed premiums (monthly payments).Policyholders also pay into a cash pot that generates tax-free interest (like a traditional investment account).This makes whole life policies expensive – you are paying for the policy and the pot.Monthly payments are about $440 for a healthy 30-year-old, according to industry averages.But annual returns on the cash value are underwhelming.

An investment in the S&P 500 in 1990 will have grown about 3,700% while a Northwestern policy would have yielded just 44% over the same period (based on its current dividend rate of 5.5%).So, a stock market investment will have grown about 85 times more than the cash value in a whole life policy.Inflation since 1990 is around 146% so the Northwestern investment would have lost value in real terms.Worse, it’s easy to lose money on these products.

A Northwestern policy viewed by the Guardian shows it takes 16 years before the cash pot is greater than the premiums paid.Cancel before then, and you will net a loss.“Whole life is not terrible for everybody; it’s just terrible for mostly everybody,” says Clark Howard, a bestselling personal finance expert.One adviser, Ben*, who has been with the company for a decade, says whole life accounts for about 80% of Northwestern’s premiums, citing internal data.Insurers stand to make a lot of money from these policies because cancellation rates are high.

A study by the American Economic Review found that a quarter of policies lapse within three years, reaching 40% within a decade,In those cases, the insurer owes no death benefit and has already invested the premiums,Should a customer keep the policy for life, the death benefit is substantially smaller than traditional, fixed-term life insurance,“I despise the life insurance industry,” says Howard,For agents, whole life pays a juicy first-year commission: typically 100% of the annual premium.

Except, at Northwestern, reps only receive about half of this, with the rest paid out over a decade,Plus, if a customer cancels within that year, reps must pay back the commission, regardless of whether they still work there,For Jeremy, it was a high school friend,When they backed out, he had to pay $1,400 back to Northwestern,“It can screw a lot of students because the attrition rate is insane,” says Clint.

The reps we spoke with claimed that the only part of financial planning they had learned about was insurance sales.A two-week training schedule from a New York office, seen by the Guardian, shows just one 30-minute session on “securities”.Twenty sources said they were told to always recommend whole life insurance.Training materials seen by the Guardian tell them to make whole life the “foundation of every plan”.This includes step-by-step pitches, one urging a hypothetical prospective client called “Briana” to commit $600 a month despite her debt and lack of dependents