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Life insurance and annuity distribution · Branding and publishing overlay on a multi-level insurance hierarchy

WealthWave, LLC

Real term, indexed universal life and annuity products from A-rated carriers, sold to real households on a plan funded entirely by carrier commission - attached to a books-and-software layer sold back to the field at $217 a month and a vesting schedule you are shown only after you resign.

Reviewed July 30, 2026 Founded Business started 25 June 2015 per the Better Business Bureau record - a private ratings body, not a government register; a commercial data aggregator gives 2012 and conflates an LLC with an Inc., and the Georgia Secretary of State filings could not be retrieved Confidence: Medium-High
C-GRADE
5.7/10
Weighted composite

REAL PRODUCT, BRUTAL ENTRY, OPAQUE EXIT

The insurance side is genuine and carrier-funded; the participant side asks for three to four unpaid months to license, a materials stack that can reach $5,400 in year one, and an exit whose chargebacks are permanent while its vesting is "if applicable."

The question you came with

Can you actually make money with WealthWave?

GO, WITH CONDITIONS Only under conditions, and they are specific

Yes, under conditions, and the structure earns its credit first. Every dollar of commission here is funded by an insurance carrier on a policy sold to a real household. There is no inventory, no pack, no autoship and no minimum personal purchase to be commission-eligible. Cash entry is $100 to apply and $25 more when you license, then $15 a month for the platform. On the money side this is a licensed insurance career, not a product-buying scheme.

Now the conditions, starting with time. Licensing takes three to four months by the company's own expectation, and no compensation of any kind may be paid before it lands. The contracting organization's dated disclosure puts the average paid to life-licensed agents across the United States and Canada in 2025 at $11,443. That is a mean rather than a median, it excludes everyone still unlicensed, it blends Canadian and United States dollars at par, and the disclosure states that business expenses are not included in it.

Those expenses are where the decision actually sits. Run the full marketed stack, meaning the platform fee, the Pro software tier with add-ons, the $217-a-month Book Club and one convention with travel, and year one costs about $5,392. Earn the disclosed average on top of that and you net about $6,000. Run the minimum viable configuration at roughly $482 and the same average nets about $11,000. That gap is entirely within your control and almost no recruiting material frames it.

Two things about the exit, because they run in opposite directions. Advanced commissions are clawed back if a client cancels, in the organization's own words even after you leave, and a negative balance becomes a debit balance that transfers with you into your next hierarchy. Against that there is no published vesting schedule anywhere. The exit page says a terminating agent will receive commission vesting information if applicable: conditional, unspecified, and sent after the resignation email has gone.

What it costs to be in
$100 + $25

$100 associate application (identity check) before licensure, $25 more on licensing, or $125 if already licensed - then $15/month platform fee, and three to four months during which no compensation of any kind may be paid

What has to be true for this to work for you
  • You can go three to four months with no income from this while you license, and you already know what those months cost your household. No compensation is permitted before licensure, and that period is nowhere costed for the recruit.
  • You will run the minimum configuration and buy your way up only when production justifies it. The distance between a $482 year and a $5,392 year is the largest variable you control here, and it is bigger than most first-year commissions.
  • You want to sell insurance to households rather than build an override organization. Advancement is recruiting-gated at every level, from three recruits for Training Agent up to three legs and ten licensed downline agents for Senior Marketing Director.
  • You ask for the vesting schedule and the full agent agreement in writing before you sign, and you accept whatever answer comes back. Neither is public, and the chargeback is permanent and travels with you while the renewal entitlement is if applicable.

That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.

$11,443
Average paid to life-licensed agents in 2025
the contracting organization’s own dated disclosure - a mean, before every business expense, excluding all unlicensed associates
3–4 months
The company’s own expectation of time to license
nine-month platform deadline plus a one-time three-month extension; zero compensation permitted before licensure
$217/mo
Book Club - 62 copies a month of a $16.99 book
$2,604 a year, for a book consumers receive free from an agent or as a free ebook
95,000+
Licensed agents in the network at end-2025
and a record 30% rise in individual new life sales in 2025, reported by the listed parent

Legal status

LEGAL - and the two regulatory files must be read separately. On state insurance licensing: no Department of Insurance order, consent order, cease-and-desist, fine, suspension or revocation naming WealthWave, LLC could be located in any source reviewed, nor any FTC action, and no self-regulatory case; that is a genuinely clean firm-level record on the searches performed, qualified only by the impossibility of a systematic fifty-state producer-discipline sweep. The insurance-conduct file on the contracting independent marketing organization is Canadian and is stage-labeled: an Ontario regulator enforcement notice in April 2023 raising supervision concerns over 10,000-plus agents (allegations, not findings), a voluntary supervisory undertaking a month later, and a CAD $50,000 administrative monetary penalty in May 2024 for having compensated an unlicensed agent who wrote 58 policies. On securities: fixed indexed universal life and fixed indexed annuities are not securities under federal law - Rule 151A was vacated in 2010 and Dodd-Frank §989J preserved state regulation - and variable universal life, variable annuities, mutual funds and 529 plans are sold only by the registered subset, through the affiliated broker-dealer Transamerica Financial Advisors, LLC, whose BrokerCheck record shows nineteen final regulatory events, all settled, the largest a December 2020 FINRA acceptance-waiver-and-consent (neither admitted nor denied) carrying a $4.4 million fine and $4,354,000 in restitution. Separately, a California wage-and-hour and PAGA action alleging misclassification of sales agents settled for $65 million gross across roughly 380,000 agents, with a final approval hearing set for 28 October 2025 - a settlement, with no admission reported and none to be inferred, and not a finding that the plan is a pyramid. One disambiguation the reader will need: the UK Financial Conduct Authority published a warning-list entry on 9 February 2025 for a firm called "Wealthwave" at wealthwaveapp.net. That is a different company at a different domain, a warning listing is not a finding of liability, and no evidence of any connection to wealthwave.com was found.

Confidence: Medium-High

Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.

What this actually is

Follow the money

Start with what is real, because it is real and the rest of this report depends on saying so plainly. The field sells term life, indexed universal life and annuities from A-rated carriers - principally Transamerica Life Insurance Company, with National Life Group and Pacific Life named in a plaintiff-side source, and the legacy Western Reserve Life family appearing by name in the compensation tables - to ordinary households, alongside disability and long-term-care cover. The scale is corroborated not by the company but by a listed parent: over 95,000 licensed agents at the end of 2025 and a record 30% increase in individual new life sales in 2025 against 2024. And the plan is funded entirely by carrier commission on a points pool calibrated to products from an insurer owned by a public company, with nothing whatsoever depending on recruit inflow - no entry fee that becomes anyone’s income, no inventory, no pack, no autoship, no minimum personal volume. Persistency is measured on a tracked block with a 120-day seasoning definition, a 75% floor and a 100% clawback of bonus money when it is breached. A scheme indifferent to whether the customer keeps paying does not build that.

Now the structure, because it is the thing most participant-facing material does not make explicit. WealthWave is not a carrier, not an insurance agency and not a broker-dealer. It is a marketing, branding, training and publishing overlay: it owns the brands, a technology subscription, an events business, a leadership center with television studios in Georgia, and four books sold to the field by the case and by monthly subscription. Every dollar of commission and override the participant earns flows from the contracting independent marketing organization - a large Atlanta- and Cedar-Rapids-headquartered outfit owned by the Dutch-listed insurer Aegon - through that organization’s contract-level schedule. WealthWave pays the participant nothing. It sits entirely on the cost side of the ledger while the income side belongs to someone else, and its own convention-site footer states that it is a marketing company and that it "is not an affiliated company of" the insurance agencies involved. Two counterparties, each formally disclaiming responsibility for the other’s half of the arrangement.

The entry cost is not the fee, and this is where the arithmetic turns. An unlicensed recruit pays $100 for an associate application and $25 more when licensed. But no compensation of any kind may be paid before a state license is issued; unlicensed associates may not sell even a referral product, may not access the agent portal, and cannot contact the home office directly. The company’s own published expectation is that many agents license within three to four months, and the onboarding platform allows nine months with a one-time three-month extension before access lapses and the recruit must reapply. Cash out across four worked states is roughly $400 to $650. The real cost is two to four months - up to a year for anyone who stalls - of unpaid work, during which the recruit is expected to recruit on a platform built for it, and during which, per the onboarding FAQ, until the recruiter becomes a licensed agent "all overrides from their licensed recruits will go to the next licensed upline in the hierarchy." The unlicensed recruit’s recruiting labor has positive monetary value, to somebody else. Their natural market is also spent at the point of lowest competence.

Then the materials layer, which is unambiguously a profit center sold to the field. A Book Club subscription is $217 a month for a case of 62 copies, shipped whether or not the previous case moved, of a book with a $16.99 reference price that essentially nobody pays - consumers receive the printed book free from an agent and the ebook free in thirty-minute, eight-minute and two-minute versions. That is $2,604 a year. Two company stores price the same title from $3.50 to $6.25 a copy, a 79% spread. The software tier runs $39 to $49 a month with four add-ons totaling about $45, or $413 a month at VIP whose only published differentiator is that the add-ons are included - 4.4 times the à-la-carte sum of its stated contents, on a checkout page still carrying Lorem ipsum. A paid designation is $1,295 plus a $500 annual registry fee plus $500 per class taught. None of it is required for any advancement; all of it is culturally expected. Assembled, the "run the system" year-one configuration is about $5,392 against a disclosed average annual cash flow of $11,443 before expenses. The minimum viable configuration is about $482, and that gap is entirely within the participant’s control.

And the exit. There is no published vesting schedule: a terminating agent is told they will receive "commission vesting information if applicable," in the confirmation that arrives after they resign. Chargebacks are stated to survive departure expressly - "even if it’s after you leave" - debit balances transfer with the participant into a new hierarchy and roll up to an upline who has pre-signed acceptance of the debt, clients and client files are restricted, downline agents are restricted by the same clause, carrier appointments terminate, and errors-and-omissions cover is claims-made so the tail liability is the departing agent’s to keep funding. The state license, correctly and creditably, remains theirs. Everything built on top of it does not.

Where the field commission pool goes on a fixed-product sale

From the contracting organization’s own United States Compensation and Advancement Guidelines, updated January 2022. These are shares of the total commission the carrier pays to the field on the product, not percentages of premium. The writing agent’s own share depends on their contract level: 25% at Training Agent, 35% at Agent, 45% at Senior Agent, 50% at Marketing Director, 65% at Senior Marketing Director.

65% 28%
Business Development - the writing agent and their base shop, up to 65%Business Expansion - generational overrides, six generations, 27.5%Bonus pools - base shop, super base, super team, 6.5%Business Supervision - 1% on fixed business, 7.75% on variable
ProductPricePays
Associate application - unlicensed entry
Paid to the contracting organization, described as being in part for an identity check. Buys entry to the onboarding platform, which grants nine months to license plus a one-time three-month extension. No compensation of any kind may be paid during that period.
$100
one-time
Agent application on licensing
Covers a background check, a producer-registry check and the first two months of errors-and-omissions cover. A recruit who is already life-licensed bypasses the associate route and pays $125. The securities-only application fee is $125, non-refundable, payable by money order or cashier’s check - an irrevocable instrument with no card chargeback.
$25
one-time
Platform fee / Access Pass
Paid to the contracting organization for technology tools, with a two-month grace period after licensing. The fee increases for participants who also hold a securities license, and the full schedule above the base is not published. Errors-and-omissions premium is bundled into it rather than priced separately, so the participant cannot see what they pay for cover versus for software.
$15/mo US, $30/mo Canada
recurring
WealthWaveONE Basic
Genuinely free and worth stating: complete agent training, a fast-start asset library, presentations and a dashboard digest at no cost to WealthWave. A participant can operate on this tier at zero. It is the single most useful fact in the cost section and it is not the tier the culture points at.
Free
recurring
WealthWaveONE Pro plus add-ons
Pro adds branded agent websites across three brands. The four add-ons are a WealthWave email address at $8, a HowMoneyWorks email address at $8, email marketing with pre-approved templates at $19, and Agent Training Team Control at $10 - the last being surveillance of your downline’s course progress, sold to you as a priced feature. Three concurrent Pro prices appear on the live page.
$39–$49/mo + $45/mo
recurring
WealthWaveONE VIP
The only stated differentiator from Pro is that the add-ons are included, which values the tier at 4.4 times the à-la-carte sum of its own published contents. No VIP feature list could be obtained, so this is either a disclosure failure or a pricing anomaly. The checkout page still carries unreplaced Lorem ipsum placeholder text.
$413/mo
recurring
Book Club subscription
One case of 62 books every month whether or not the previous case moved, at $3.50 a copy against a $16.99 reference price that consumers do not pay - they receive the printed book free from an agent or the ebook free in three lengths. $2,604 a year. Gated on a field educator code. The historic price on the same live store was $155 a month at $2.50 a copy, a 40% increase. Three of the six stated benefits are about the upline’s ability to monitor and duplicate behavior.
$217/mo
recurring
CFEd designation route
Paid to an external institute, not to WealthWave: $1,295 for a self-study course and online exam, $500 a year for the instructor registry, $500 per class taught. Requirements are three years in financial services, self-study materials, an exam, and twelve annual CE hours of which two are reading the issuer’s monthly website articles. The issuer’s own selling point is that it "creates an image for the financial professional as an educator or teacher rather than a sales person." Priced as paid lead generation, not professional development.
$1,295 + $500/yr + $500 per class
one-time then annual
Background check

Who runs it, and what they ran before

TM
Tom Mathews
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WealthWave - and simultaneously a top-of-hierarchy field leader of the contracting independent marketing organization

His own website states both roles plainly, which is to his credit as disclosure. Stated neutrally, the structure is this: as a senior field officer of the contracting organization he receives generational overrides and bonus-pool distributions on the production of the hierarchy beneath him, which includes the WealthWave field; as founder and chief executive of WealthWave he owns the entity that sells that same field its brand, its books, its software and its event tickets; and he is co-author of the books the field is encouraged to buy by the case. That is not an allegation of wrongdoing and both roles are public. It means the person who designs the system the field is told to follow is also the vendor of the system’s consumables and a beneficiary of the field’s production. His biography describes over three decades in the industry and a team of "over 30,000 people" - which is a downline, not a payroll. No adverse regulatory record naming him personally was located in state insurance disciplinary databases, FINRA BrokerCheck individual records or SEC administrative proceedings; that is a negative finding on the searches performed, not a clean-bill certification.

SS
Steve Siebold
Co-author of the flagship title

Co-author with Tom Mathews of "HowMoneyWorks: Stop Being a Sucker," confirmed by book listings and archival records. He is an author and speaker rather than, on the evidence available, a WealthWave officer. He is listed here because the publishing side is a material part of the participant’s cost base and because authorship is one of the few facts about the entity that can be verified from a primary source.

Gn
Governance note
One named principal, no officers, no board, no financials

WealthWave publishes no corporate leadership page, no board, no ownership disclosure, no financial statements, no income disclosure of its own and no compliance contact. The homepage’s "leadership" section is a rotating quotation from a field leader rather than a management roster. An organizational-chart aggregator shows unnamed chief-marketing-officer and senior-vice-president nodes and marks the whole chart "Unverified." It is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau. The inversion is the point worth recording: the licensed layer beneath it publishes a president, press releases, a dated earnings disclosure and a step-by-step exit procedure, while the unlicensed branding layer doing the recruiting publishes none of those things.

Sn
Structural note
Two counterparties, one ledger

The technical proof that the field is not WealthWave’s field is unambiguous. The account-setup form for WealthWave’s own paid platform requires an agent ID issued by the contracting organization, so the subscription is only sellable to people already contracted elsewhere. The "Get Started" call-to-action on WealthWave’s own blog template resolves to the contracting organization’s recruit-onboarding platform. The sequence is: recruit under WealthWave branding, onboard through the other organization’s platform, license with the state, contract with its agency, sell its carriers’ products, and pay WealthWave separately for brand, books, technology and events.

Registered address

WealthWave Leadership Headquarters, 190 Bluegrass Valley Parkway, Alpharetta, Georgia, USA
The addresses map the structure better than any prose can. WealthWave’s own money sits in Alpharetta - the leadership center, the TV studios and the book store at 3030 Royal Boulevard South. The insurance license, the agency contract and the commission check sit elsewhere, in Johns Creek, Georgia and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, under a different owner: a large independent marketing organization owned by the Dutch-listed insurer Aegon and distributing principally under the Transamerica brand. WealthWave’s own convention-site legal footer states that it is a financial education and financial services marketing company and that it "is not an affiliated company of" the insurance agencies through which its field’s products are sold. So the participant contracts with two organizations that each formally disclaim responsibility for the other’s side of the ledger: costs with one, income with the other. WealthWave, LLC is privately held and files no accounts; third-party revenue estimates run from $69 million to $500 million, which is not a range but an absence of data.

Compensation plan

What has to be true for you to get paid

To coverYou need
Get licensed, contracted and appointed ≈$400–650 plus 6–16 weeks unpaid
$100 associate fee, $25 on licensing, ~$150 course, and $57 (Michigan) to $405 (Illinois) in state exam, application and fingerprint fees
Fund the "run the system" year-one configuration ≈$5,392
platform fee, Pro tier plus four add-ons, the $217-a-month Book Club, one convention with travel
Cover that stack from personal commission alone ≈6 average policies
the plan’s own worked example is a $185-a-month premium producing $2,775 to the field; an Agent at 35% nets about $971 a policy
Actually clear the disclosed average after costs roughly the average, twice
$11,443 gross average, less ≈$5,392 spent, is about $6,000 for the year - or about $11,000 on the ≈$482 minimum configuration

Read this twice

Two numbers do most of the work here and both come from the operators themselves. The first is the disclosed average: $11,443 paid to life-insurance-licensed agents in the United States and Canada in 2025, revised 6 March 2026, with the disclosure stating in terms that agents are independent contractors responsible for their own business expenses and that those expenses are not included. The second is the licensing rule: no commission or other compensation may be paid before a proper license is issued, and the company’s own published expectation is that many agents license within three to four months. Put those together and the shape of year one is clear. For the first two to four months the participant earns nothing by rule, cannot sell even a referral product, has no portal access and cannot contact the home office directly - while being expected to recruit on a platform designed for it, with any overrides from recruits who license first diverted, per the onboarding FAQ, to "the next licensed upline in the hierarchy." At an illustrative $20 an hour, roughly 146 hours of study and effort over twelve weeks is about $2,900 of foregone value, which dwarfs every disclosed fee. That is the real entry cost and it is structurally invisible because nobody bills it. Three caveats cut the company’s way and belong here. The disclosed average is a genuine, dated, specific figure with an explicit statement that expenses are excluded, which is more than much of this sector publishes. The minimum viable configuration is real: the Basic software tier is free, no purchase conditions any advancement, and a disciplined participant can be in for about $482. And the fee guidance is honest to the point of being conservative - the organization tells recruits exams cost "approximately $100" when the actual national range is $29 to $96. What is missing is what would let anyone model this properly: no median, no figure that includes unlicensed associates in the denominator, and no published rate at which onboarding-program entrants actually get licensed within their nine months.

Run your own numbers

Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.

-
Cumulative net, after costs
Total policies written -
Commission that month -
Total commissions earned -
Total you paid in -
Net -

First-year commission on a typical policy at an entry contract level of 25%, so this does not compound and the churn slider is disabled. Cost reflects the roughly $5,400 a year it takes to run the system, including a $217-a-month book subscription. Three things the model cannot show: you cannot legally be paid anything for the three to four months it takes to get licensed, and your overrides go to the next licensed upline in the meantime; advanced commissions are clawed back even after you leave; and there is no published vesting schedule - it is disclosed only once you resign. The disclosed 2025 average across life-licensed agents was $11,443 before expenses. Your own subscription cost of $450/mo is included.

Your money

What it costs to replace this yourself

WealthWave’s and the contracting organization’s own published prices against ordinary open-market equivalents at comparable function. Two honest notes travel with this table. First, the carrier products themselves are not the problem - the premium belongs to the carrier and the client pays the same either way; the comparison there is about where the producer’s contract sits, and the same carriers can be contracted through ordinary independent brokerages at street-level commission with no layer above. Second, the books-and-materials layer has no open-market equivalent at all, which is precisely why it is a profit center: a captive market of licensed agents buying a prospecting device from the organization that designed the prospecting method.

What they sell youWhat you'd use insteadYour cost
WealthWaveONE Pro plus all four add-ons - ~$94/moA mainstream website builder, business email on your own domain and a standard email-marketing tool~$25–45/mo
WealthWaveONE VIP - $413/moThe same three tools plus a mainstream CRM with automation~$60–120/mo
Two branded email addresses - $8/mo eachOne business mailbox on a domain you own and keep~$6/mo
Agent Training Team Control - $10/moNothing; it monitors your downline’s course progress, not your production$0
Book Club - $217/mo for 62 copies of a $16.99 bookThe publisher’s own free consumer ebook, or a short print run of your own compliant leaflet$0–60/mo
Books by the case - $310 for 62, or $125 for 20 at the second storeAny general-market personal-finance paperback bought at volume~$4–8 a copy
CFEd designation - $1,295 plus $500/yr registry plus $500 per classState continuing education at $5–15 a credit hour, or a nationally recognized planning credential with a real examination~$75–150 a renewal cycle
Convention ticket plus travel and hotel - ~$1,000 all-inCarrier and industry conferences, many of them free to appointed producers$0–400
The carrier products - Transamerica term, indexed UL, annuitiesThe identical carriers’ products through an ordinary independent brokeragesame premium to the client, typically a higher share to you
Total as sold
≈$5,392 in year one on the "run the system" configuration; ≈$11,515 on the upper one
Total, built yourself
≈$500–900 of comparable tools and continuing education

Price-to-value

The tools gap is real but modest in absolute terms - a few hundred dollars a year of overpricing on software, and a $413 tier whose published contents are worth $94. The gap that decides the exercise is the materials layer, because there is no open-market equivalent for it and because it is the largest single recurring line: $2,604 a year of books that the end consumer receives free. The most important comparison, though, is the one at the bottom of the table. A licensed producer can contract the same carriers through an ordinary independent brokerage, keep a higher share of the same premium, publish their own marketing, own their own domain and client files, and negotiate their own vesting. What they give up is the training, the community, the events and the recruiting hierarchy - which for some people is genuinely worth paying for, and for a first-time salesperson with no natural market may be worth a great deal. That trade should be made with the numbers in front of you, and this table is those numbers.

Odds of profit

Three operators, five horizons

Probability of cumulative net profit

Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%3 mo6 mo1 yr3 yr5 yr 49% 23% 19%
Already-licensed producer - holds a life license, real natural market, minimum configuration, ignores the materials treadmillUnlicensed part-time recruit - 10 hrs/wk, licenses in three to four months, Pro tier and some booksFull-time builder running the system - 40+ hrs/wk, Book Club, convention, designation, recruiting toward Senior Marketing Director

Already-licensed producer

holds a life license, real natural market, minimum configuration, ignores the materials treadmill

HorizonP(profit)Median
3 mo 34% −$150
6 mo 42% +$300
1 yr 46% +$1,400
3 yr 48% +$6,000
5 yr 49% +$12,000

Unlicensed part-time recruit

10 hrs/wk, licenses in three to four months, Pro tier and some books

HorizonP(profit)Median
3 mo 2% −$700
6 mo 7% −$1,300
1 yr 14% −$2,400
3 yr 21% −$4,500
5 yr 23% −$5,800

Full-time builder running the system

40+ hrs/wk, Book Club, convention, designation, recruiting toward Senior Marketing Director

HorizonP(profit)Median
3 mo 1% −$1,900
6 mo 4% −$3,600
1 yr 9% −$5,400
3 yr 16% −$9,000
5 yr 19% −$11,000

Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims, not projections and not anybody’s promise. ANCHORED to published figures: the disclosed 2025 average of $11,443 paid to life-insurance-licensed agents before expenses; the plan’s own worked example of a $185-a-month premium producing $2,775 to the field, giving about $971 to an Agent at the 35% contract level; the contract-level ladder of 25/35/45/50/65%; the rule that no compensation may be paid before licensure and the company’s own three-to-four-month licensing expectation; and the published cost side - $100 and $25 in application fees, $15 a month platform, $39–$49 plus $45 in software, $217 a month for books, $1,295 plus $500 plus $500 for the designation, $100 convention tickets, and state licensing costs of $57 to $405. MODELED by us: the share of each cohort in cumulative profit at each horizon, the cohort definitions, which neither organization segments, and the dollar spread between the median, top-decile and bottom-decile outcomes. Two calibrations matter and both are honest. The first cuts against the company: no median is published anywhere, and the disclosed mean excludes every unlicensed associate - all of whom earned nothing - from its denominator, so the true central outcome across everyone who signs an agreement is certainly below $11,443 and cannot be computed from public data. The second cuts for it: the minimum configuration is genuinely about $482, the free software tier is real, and no purchase is a condition of any advancement, so a licensed producer with a real natural market who declines the materials treadmill sits materially better than the two builder cohorts here. That is why the first profile is the only one showing a majority in cumulative profit, and why the difference between the three rows is spending decisions as much as it is selling ability.

Go-to-market

Where you are actually allowed to promote this

Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.

Channel
Status
Notes
Advertising life insurance and annuities online
GOVERNED BY STATE LAW, NOT COMPANY PREFERENCE
The NAIC Advertisements of Life Insurance and Annuities Model Regulation reaches print, digital and social media marketing, emails, online video, sponsored content and agent presentations, whether they originate with the insurer, the agency or the producer. Any communication designed to create interest in life insurance or annuities is advertising, including a blog post, a website, a sales aid, and any training material the public could ever see. Liability sits with the producer even if a hired copywriter drafted it. This is the binding constraint on this channel and it is not optional.
Pre-approved template libraries
SUPPLIED BY BOTH ORGANIZATIONS
The contracting organization supplies a library of pre-approved emails and social posts, and WealthWave’s $19-a-month add-on sells pre-approved email, campaign and landing-page templates. Centralised approved content routed through a controlled template system is the correct architecture for a large dispersed field, and it is a real credit. It also means the participant does not own the marketing asset.
Income claims in field-produced material
RAMPANT AND EFFECTIVELY UNPOLICED
Publicly hosted field decks tie income directly to hours worked - "$1000 – $2000" monthly at the 25% contract level, "$3000 – $5000" at 45%, "$7,000 – $10,000+" at 65% and forty hours a week - against a disclosed annual average of $11,443. Roughly an order of magnitude, with no disclaimer visible. Neither company produced this material, which is exactly the problem: it circulates, it is what recruits read, and hypotheticals presented as results are precisely what the advertising regulation prohibits.
Calling a policy an investment or "tax-free retirement"
PROHIBITED
A life policy may not be described as an investment, a savings account, a retirement plan or a 401(k) alternative without clear explanation that it is insurance. "Tax-free retirement income" as an unqualified claim, "guaranteed," "never lose money" and "market returns without market risk" are all on the wrong side of the line. This is also the sharpest professional risk in the file: a participant holding only a life license who describes an indexed policy in investment terms drifts toward conduct they are not licensed for, on their own license and their own claims-made cover.
Testimonials and reviews from participants
COMPENSATION MUST BE DISCLOSED
Testimonials must be authentic and any compensation or relationship must be disclosed. In a channel where nearly every enthusiastic reviewer is a commissioned participant, that is a live exposure across every platform. The contracting organization’s reviews-platform profile shows 4.6 from 220 reviews on a claimed profile with a paid subscription, on a platform whose own disclaimer says it does not fact-check reviews, and many visible reviews are participants describing income outcomes - which is itself an advertising problem rather than consumer evidence.
Titles and designations
FIELD RANKS THAT READ AS CORPORATE OFFICES
"Marketing Director," "Senior Vice President" and "Executive Vice Chairman" are field ranks, not offices; the plan document states that agents are independent contractors regardless of field title. Titles also do not track current production, because a leader who fails annual requalification may "retain their title but will be at the advancement pay level for which they actually qualify." And a paid designation described as "FINRA recognized" invites the inference that a securities regulator has vouched for it - FINRA lists designations as an investor-education resource and does not accredit them.
Soliciting or selling before you are licensed
BARRED BY CONTRACT AND BY STATE LAW
No compensation may be paid before a license is issued, unlicensed associates may not sell even a referral product, they have no portal access, and in California the unlicensed route is replaced entirely by an academy. These are genuine structural barriers and they are the strongest single answer to the pure-recruitment characterisation. The caveat is that a recruiting-first culture puts pressure on exactly this rule: in May 2024 the Ontario regulator imposed a CAD $50,000 administrative monetary penalty on the contracting organization for having compensated an unlicensed agent who wrote 58 policies over ten months, and fined that individual CAD $80,000.
The second, stricter layer for securities-registered participants
PRE-APPROVAL AND ARCHIVING
A participant registered with the affiliated broker-dealer is additionally bound by FINRA communications rules - principal pre-approval for retail communications, prohibitions on performance projections, strict testimonial rules and recordkeeping of business communications including social and text. Two teammates side by side on the same feed are under materially different regimes, and the stricter one is the securities-registered one. In a duplicate-the-leader culture that is a real trap.
Speaking to your clients or your downline after you leave
RESTRICTED, AND IT SURVIVES TERMINATION
The exit page states that the contract restricts asking or encouraging clients or other agents to follow you, and restricts taking or using confidential information including client files, with obligations continuing after termination. The full agreement is not public, so the scope, duration and geography of those covenants cannot be read before signing. A participant cannot build a portable book here, and cannot see the terms on which they would be prevented from trying.
The evidence

Red flags and green flags

Red flags

15
1You contract with two organizations that formally disclaim each other, and only one pays you
WealthWave takes the subscription, book, event and designation money; the contracting independent marketing organization issues the agency contract and pays the commission. WealthWave’s own convention-site footer states it "is not an affiliated company of" the insurance agencies concerned. Costs sit with one entity, income with the other, and neither is answerable for the other’s half of the ledger. This is the most under-appreciated risk in the structure.
2Advancement is recruiting-gated at every single level
Training Agent requires three recruits and three observed field-training appointments in thirty days. Agent requires three direct agents plus five licensed in the organization. Senior Marketing Director requires three direct legs plus ten licensed downline agents, six of them life-licensed. Above that, Executive Marketing Director, CEO Marketing Director and Executive Vice Chairman require three, six and nine direct Senior Marketing Director legs. Generational overrides do not exist below Senior Marketing Director, so the plan’s four advertised income "dimensions" collapse to one for anyone who has not recruited and licensed ten people.
3The bonus pool puts a price on recruiting three people
Eligibility is "25,000 base shop net points with three (3) or more recruits; or 30,000 base shop net points with less than three (3) recruits" - a quantified 16.7% production discount for recruiting, in the same official document that states "no income is earned for recruiting." Both sentences are literally true. This is the sharpest recruitment-adjacent finding in the plan.
4Unlicensed recruits are expected to recruit, and their recruits’ overrides go to someone else
From the onboarding FAQ: until the recruiter becomes a licensed agent, all overrides from their licensed recruits "go to the next licensed upline in the hierarchy." So an unlicensed associate’s recruiting labor has positive monetary value - harvested by whoever is above them. The onboarding platform is explicitly built for pre-licensing education, learning the business model and recruiting, with a campaign manager for prospective recruits and downline visibility five levels deep.
5Three to four months of unpaid work, and it is nowhere costed for the recruit
The company’s own expectation is that many agents license within three to four months; the platform allows nine months plus a one-time three-month extension before access lapses and the recruit must reapply and may pay again. During that period no compensation of any kind may be paid, no referral product may be sold, there is no portal access and no direct contact with the home office. At an illustrative $20 an hour, roughly 146 hours over twelve weeks is about $2,900 of foregone value - more than every disclosed fee combined.
6A $217-a-month books subscription for a book consumers get free
62 copies a month whether or not the previous case moved, at $3.50 against a $16.99 reference price essentially nobody pays: consumers receive the printed book free from an agent or the ebook free in thirty-minute, eight-minute and two-minute versions. $2,604 a year - more than four and a half times the entire cash cost of licensing in a cheap state. The price on the same live store was $155 historically, a 40% increase. Two company stores price the same title at $3.50 and $6.25, a 79% spread with no cross-reference.
7A $413-a-month software tier whose published contents are worth $94
Pro plus all four add-ons totals about $94 a month; the VIP tier is $413 and its only stated differentiator is that the add-ons are included - 4.4 times the à-la-carte sum. No VIP feature list could be obtained. The checkout page still carries unreplaced Lorem ipsum placeholder text, as does the convention site. Live placeholder copy on a page taking recurring card payments is a quality signal in its own right.
8The founder is on both sides of the participant’s ledger
Simultaneously a senior field executive of the contracting organization, receiving overrides and pool distributions on the production of the hierarchy beneath him, and founder, chief executive and co-author of the vendor selling that same field its brand, books, software and events. Both roles are disclosed on his own website, which is creditable. The structural consequence is that the designer of the system is also the vendor of its consumables and a beneficiary of the field’s production.
9No published vesting schedule - it is "if applicable" and disclosed after you resign
The exit page promises "commission vesting information if applicable" in the confirmation that follows a termination request. The single term determining whether renewals survive departure is therefore unknowable until departure is irreversible. No orphan-policy or renewal-assignment rule is published either.
10Chargebacks are permanent and debit balances follow you
In the organization’s own words, if a client cancels a policy, "even if it’s after you leave," advanced commissions may have to be repaid. Negative balances become debit balances that transfer with the participant into a new hierarchy and roll up to an upline who pre-signs acceptance of the debt. Bonus money is clawed back at 100% if the tracked block falls below 75% persistency. An existing debit balance at another agency is a disclosable question on the application form, which tells you how routine agent indebtedness is here.
11The points machinery mechanically favors the highest-payout product, which is indexed universal life
The plan states that "points are accumulated based on the type of product sold and the total percentage to the field," and the reference indexed family pays 126.5 against a 100% table. Every advancement threshold, every pool and every ranking is denominated in points. That is not a conspiracy, it is arithmetic - and it is the origin of the indexed-UL concentration criticism, which here is supported by the plan’s own primary documents rather than by an interested party.
12Survivorship-selected earnings presented under tenure headings on a public recruiting page
"Tier 1 (0–3 Years Experience) — $68,403," then $239,950 and $753,615. The footnotes restrict every figure to agents already at Senior Marketing Director, Executive Marketing Director or CEO Marketing Director level who also sold at least one policy in the year. To be a Senior Marketing Director you need three legs, ten licensed downline agents and $20,000 to $35,000 of rolling cash flow. The footnotes are accurate; the presentation invites a recruit to read years on the left and earnings on the right.
13Field income claims an order of magnitude high, and a lifestyle funnel with no disclosure at all
"$7,000 – $10,000+ monthly income" in publicly hosted field material against a disclosed $11,443 a year. A recruiting site sells "No boss," "No layoffs" and "Earn Without Limits" with no earnings disclosure on the page. A recruiting comparison sets $158 trillion of financial assets against $34 trillion of real-estate market value and $24 trillion of retail sales as if all three were industry sizes - a stock compared with two flows.
14A $65 million California misclassification settlement across roughly 380,000 agents
Stage-labeled exactly: a wage-and-hour and Private Attorneys General Act action against the contracting insurance organization - not against WealthWave - alleging misclassification of sales agents as independent contractors, settled for $65 million gross and roughly $43 million net, with a final approval hearing set for 28 October 2025 in San Francisco County Superior Court. No admission of liability is reported and none should be inferred; pleadings that used pyramid language are allegations. What it does establish is class size: 380,000 people through one state’s class period against a current North American network of 95,000, which is the arithmetic signature of high churn. It also shows the independent-contractor basis on which every cost in this report sits was contested and expensive.
15Supervision at scale is the documented failure mode, in two different bodies of law
On the insurance side: an Ontario regulator enforcement notice in April 2023 raising concerns about monitoring and supervision of 10,000-plus agents selling complex products (allegations, not findings), a voluntary supervisory undertaking a month later, and a CAD $50,000 administrative monetary penalty in May 2024 for compensating an unlicensed agent who wrote 58 policies. On the securities side, kept separate: the affiliated broker-dealer’s BrokerCheck record shows nineteen final regulatory events, all settled, including a December 2020 FINRA acceptance-waiver-and-consent - neither admitted nor denied - carrying a censure, a $4.4 million fine and $4,354,000 in restitution for supervisory failures across variable annuity exchanges, mutual fund share classes and 529 plans. Two regulators, two bodies of law, the same diagnosis about the same distribution model.

Green flags

10
1The product is real, sold to real third parties, and corroborated at scale by a listed parent
Term life, indexed universal life and annuities from carriers the organization states must be rated A or higher - principally Transamerica Life Insurance Company - sold to households that buy them with no income offer attached. The listed parent reported over 95,000 licensed agents at the end of 2025 and a record 30% increase in individual new life sales in 2025 against 2024. A recruitment-funded scheme does not appear in a Dutch-listed insurer’s operating result as record individual life sales.
2Compensation is funded entirely by carrier commission, with no inventory and no purchase requirement
Pay is denominated in premium written to third-party households. There is no pack, no starter kit, no autoship for qualification, no minimum personal volume in product, and no fee paid by a recruit that becomes anyone’s income. The official plan document states "no income is earned for recruiting" in every edition since 2014. Nothing in the payout depends on recruit inflow.
3Persistency is measured and enforced with real teeth
A tracked block of business with a 120-day seasoning definition, a 75% persistency floor applied to each month’s business after six months, a 100% clawback of bonus dollars on breach, a 75% net-point-ratio requirement, and demotion of a new Senior Marketing Director with loss of an exchange leg for breaching it. Plans indifferent to whether the customer keeps paying do not build this.
4Override depth is capped at six generations and the total take is under half the writing agent’s top level
27.5% on fixed business and 21.5% on variable across six generations, against a 65% top contract level for the writing agent. That is a shallow, finite structure by the standards of this channel, and it is the strongest single answer to an endless-chain characterisation.
5A dated, specific, company-published earnings disclosure that says expenses are excluded
An average of $11,443 paid to life-insurance-licensed agents in the United States and Canada in 2025, last revised 6 March 2026, with an explicit statement that agents are independent contractors responsible for their own business expenses and that those expenses are not included in the figure. It is a mean rather than a median and it excludes unlicensed associates - both real limitations - but publishing a hard number with the expense caveat attached is more than much of this sector does.
6The state license is yours, and the organization publishes a how-to-quit page
In the United States the license is not tied to the contract; terminating does not affect license status, though carrier appointments end once notified. The organization publishes a step-by-step exit procedure with an email address and an in-portal termination tool, and warns the departing agent about chargebacks, vesting, claims-made errors-and-omissions tail and non-solicitation. Publishing an exit page at all is unusual and creditable, and administratively the exit is genuinely low-friction.
7Genuinely low cash entry, honestly stated, with the exam fee quoted above the real range
$100 plus $25, or $125 if already licensed; a $15-a-month platform fee with a two-month grace period after licensing; pre-licensing education openly described as $20–$250 paid to education providers rather than to the organization; and exam fees stated as "approximately $100" when the actual national range is $29 to $96. A free Basic software tier exists and is real.
8Hard structural barriers to earning while unlicensed
No compensation before licensure, by contract. Unlicensed associates barred even from referral products. No agent-portal access. And in California the unlicensed associate route is replaced entirely by an academy, consistent with that state’s stricter treatment of unlicensed solicitation.
9No participant-capital exposure of any kind, and a clean firm-level United States insurance record
No capital contribution, no promised return, no revenue share, no equity, no token, no staking, no pool of participant funds and no withdrawal friction - the only participant balance that exists is a debit balance, meaning the participant owes the firm. And no state Department of Insurance order, consent order, cease-and-desist, FTC action or self-regulatory case naming WealthWave, LLC could be located, qualified only by the impossibility of a systematic fifty-state producer-discipline sweep.
10Real anti-gaming provisions in the plan
No more than half the required license count or net points for a Senior Marketing Director advancement may come from any one leg; referral licenses do not count; a twelve-month quarantine bars recently transferred agents and their downlines from counting toward an advancement; certain contest points are excluded; and executives above Senior Marketing Director must requalify annually or drop to the pay level they actually qualify for. The presence of these rules is evidence both that gaming is attempted and that it is policed.
What would move this grade

We would like to be wrong about this

Upward

  • Publish the vesting schedule ex ante - with the advance percentage and term, the orphan-policy and renewal-assignment rule, and the non-solicitation scope and duration - instead of promising "commission vesting information if applicable" after a resignation is filed. This is the single largest available upgrade and it would move the terms dimension by two or three points on its own.
  • Publish a median rather than a mean, include everyone who signed an agreement in the denominator rather than only licensed agents, publish the rate at which onboarding-program entrants actually license within their nine months, and publish real persistency and lapse experience for the field’s block so a recruit can price their own chargeback risk against the 75% floor they are held to.
  • Retire or relabel the tenure-headed earnings table so the columns say what the footnotes say - field level, not years - put an earnings disclosure on every recruiting surface including the lifestyle funnel and the convention site, drop the "FINRA recognized" framing, and either fold the prospecting materials into the platform fee or supply new agents a defined quantity of books at no charge.

Downward

  • Evidence that any hierarchy override is paid on book, subscription, event or designation purchases. That is currently unverified in both directions and it is the single most important open question in the file: if uplines earn on materials, the soft mandate becomes a hard conflict and both the compensation and payout dimensions fall sharply.
  • A state Department of Insurance order, consent order or cease-and-desist naming WealthWave, LLC or a WealthWave-branded agency - particularly on unlicensed solicitation or on advertising - or a United States repeat of the Ontario unlicensed-compensation penalty, which would show that matter was not merely jurisdictional.
  • Carrier retrenchment on the product that funds the structure. The parent has already announced a reinsurance transaction on part of a secondary-guarantee universal life block and is redomiciling; if field payout on the indexed family fell from its 126.5-point calibration, four override layers and three bonus pools would compress at once. Further misclassification exposure outside California, or the introduction of any purchase requirement for commission eligibility, would do comparable damage.
The better trade

Grade is C−. Real carrier products, carrier-funded pay and no participant capital at risk - attached to a disclosure regime, an entry cost and an exit contract that all have to be graded hard.

Say the good half first, because it is genuinely good and half of this file rests on it. The field sells term life, indexed universal life and annuities from A-rated carriers, principally Transamerica, to households that need them. The scale is corroborated by a listed parent rather than by a press release: over 95,000 licensed agents at the end of 2025 and a record 30% increase in individual new life sales. Every dollar of commission and override is funded by carrier commission on premium written to third parties - there is no inventory, no pack, no autoship, no minimum personal volume, and no fee a recruit pays that becomes anyone’s income. Overrides are capped at six generations totaling 27.5% of the field pool, well under the writing agent’s own top level of 65%. Persistency is measured on a tracked block with a 120-day seasoning rule, a 75% floor and a 100% clawback of bonus money on breach. And on the participant’s own capital there is nothing to lose in the securities sense: no deposit, no stake, no promised return, no pool of participant funds, no token, no balance to withdraw. The only balance that exists runs the other way, as a debt the participant owes. Anyone grading this channel badly because its subject matter is financial has answered a different question.

Then the entry economics, which is where the arithmetic turns. No compensation of any kind may be paid before a state license issues, and the company’s own expectation is three to four months, with a nine-month platform deadline and a one-time three-month extension behind it. During that window the recruit cannot sell even a referral product, cannot access the portal, cannot contact the home office directly - and is expected to recruit, on a platform built for it, with any overrides from recruits who license first going, per the onboarding FAQ, to the next licensed upline in the hierarchy. Cash out is $400 to $650. Time out, at an illustrative $20 an hour, is around $2,900 that nobody bills. Layered on top is a materials stack that is unambiguously a profit center: $217 a month for 62 copies of a $16.99 book that consumers receive free, $2,604 a year; $413 a month for a software tier whose published contents are worth $94; $1,295 plus $500 a year plus $500 a class for a designation whose issuer’s own selling point is that it makes a salesperson look like a teacher. The "run the system" year-one configuration is about $5,392 against a disclosed average annual cash flow of $11,443 before expenses. None of it is required. The free tier is real and the minimum configuration is about $482. But the culture points at the expensive path, and the difference between the two is most of the difference between a modest profit and a modest loss.

The exit is the part to sit with longest. There is no published vesting schedule: a resigning agent is told they will receive "commission vesting information if applicable," in the confirmation that arrives after the resignation. Chargebacks are stated to survive departure expressly - "even if it’s after you leave" - debit balances transfer into a new hierarchy and roll up to an upline who pre-signs the debt, clients and client files are restricted, downline agents are restricted by the same clause, appointments terminate, and errors-and-omissions cover is claims-made so the tail is yours to keep funding after the income stops. The full agent agreement is not public, so non-solicitation scope, arbitration and any class-action waiver are unknowable before signing. Two other things belong in the same paragraph, stage-labeled precisely. A California wage-and-hour and Private Attorneys General Act action against the contracting insurance organization, alleging misclassification of sales agents as independent contractors, settled for $65 million gross across roughly 380,000 agents with no admission reported - which is not a finding about the plan, but does say something about churn and about the contractor basis on which every cost above sits. And two regulators in two different bodies of law have reached the same diagnosis about this distribution model: an Ontario enforcement notice and later a CAD $50,000 penalty for compensating an unlicensed agent, and nineteen settled regulatory events at the affiliated broker-dealer, the largest a 2020 FINRA consent with a $4.4 million fine for supervisory failures. Supervision at scale, twice.

1

Get licensed first, then decide who to contract with

The license is yours, it costs $150 to $650 depending on the state, and it is portable. Nothing in the licensing process requires this hierarchy, and holding it before you sign converts you from a $100 unlicensed associate with no portal access into a $125 already-licensed joiner who can earn from day one. If you then want the training, the community and the events, you can buy them from a position of choice rather than from four unpaid months of dependence.

2

Ask for the vesting schedule in writing before you sign anything

The one term that decides whether this is a career or a treadmill is currently "commission vesting information if applicable," delivered after you resign. Ask for the schedule, the orphan-policy rule, the advance percentage and term, and the non-solicitation scope and duration - in writing, before the agreement. If the answer is that it will be explained later, that is the answer.

3

Run the minimum configuration for twelve months and let the numbers decide

The Basic software tier is free, no advancement requires a book purchase, and the minimum viable year is about $482. Do that year, count your policies, and compare the result with the $5,392 you were culturally expected to spend. If the system genuinely produces, it will produce on the cheap configuration too. If it only produces on the expensive one, the expense was the product.

4

Price the same carriers through an ordinary independent brokerage

Transamerica, National Life Group and Pacific Life contracts are available to a licensed producer through ordinary independent brokerages at street-level commission, with your own domain, your own marketing, your own client files and negotiated vesting. The client pays the same premium. What you give up is the hierarchy, the training and the community - which for a first-time salesperson with no natural market may be worth real money. Make that trade with both sets of numbers on the table, not one.

The chargeback is permanent and travels with you; the vesting is "if applicable" and is shown to you only after you resign.
Scorecard

Nine dimensions, weighted

Comp structure & KoscotDoes the plan pay for recruitment or for sales to real customers?
20%
6.0
Both sides of this are real and the number sits where it does because they roughly cancel. In favor: pay comes only on premium written to third-party households, at published contract levels of 25% / 35% / 45% / 50% / 65% of the field commission pool; there is no inventory, no pack, no autoship and no minimum personal purchase for commission eligibility; the plan document states in terms, in every edition since 2014, that "no income is earned for recruiting"; generational overrides are capped at six generations totaling 27.5% on fixed business, less than half the writing agent’s own top level; and persistency is enforced with a 75% floor on a tracked block and a 100% clawback of bonus dollars when breached. Against that: advancement is recruiting-gated at every single level - three recruits for Training Agent, three direct agents plus five licensed for Agent, three legs plus ten licensed downline agents for Senior Marketing Director, and three, six and nine direct Senior Marketing Director legs above that - so the entire override economy is unreachable without recruiting and licensing ten other people. And the bonus pool prices recruitment explicitly: eligibility is "25,000 base shop net points with three (3) or more recruits; or 30,000 base shop net points with less than three (3) recruits," a quantified 16.7% production discount for recruiting three people, in the same document that says no income is earned for recruiting. Both sentences are literally true. The fair reading is that the money is real and comes from customers, and the career is a recruiting career.
Securities exposureAny passive return on capital? Howey, staking, tokens, withdrawal friction.
15%
9.0
This dimension measures one thing only: whether the participant hands over capital against a promised return. Here they do not, and the reasoning should be stated explicitly because this is the most-confused dimension on the site. No capital is taken from participants and no return of any kind is promised. The fees pay for license processing, an identity and background check, software and books, each at a stated unit price - a $100 associate application, $25 on licensing, $15 a month for platform access, and optional subscriptions and materials. There is no minimum investment, no capital account, no deposit, no stake, no lock-up, no buy-in, no package, no position or slot sold for money, no token, no staking, no yield, no revenue-share and no equity. There is no pool of participant funds: the three "bonus pools" are pools of carrier-paid field commission distributed to qualifiers on production, and the word pool must not be allowed to do any work it has not earned. There is no participant balance to withdraw - the only balance that exists is a debit balance, meaning the participant owes the organization, which is the exact opposite of a security. And passivity is structurally impossible: no compensation may be paid before a state license is issued, executives above a certain level must requalify annually or lose their pay level, and advanced commissions are clawed back if policies lapse. Client-side securities exposure is a different question with a different answer. Variable universal life, variable annuities, mutual funds and 529 plans are sold through the affiliated broker-dealer by the registered subset of the field, and indexed universal life and indexed annuities are insurance products with real complexity. That is client exposure, not participant-capital exposure. The subject matter being financial is never the answer to this question. The one point deducted is not for capital risk at all but for the live conduct edge: a licensed-only participant who describes an indexed policy to a household as an investment with tax-free retirement income drifts toward territory they are not licensed for, and that risk is borne on their own license and their own errors-and-omissions policy.
Ownership & track recordWho runs it, what did they run before, and what happened to it.
15%
4.0
Stated neutrally and precisely, this is a conflict-of-interest structure rather than a misconduct record. The founder is simultaneously a senior field executive of the contracting independent marketing organization, earning overrides and pool distributions on the production of the field, and the chief executive and co-author of the vendor selling that same field its books, its software, its brand and its events. Both roles are publicly disclosed on his own website, which is to his credit; no adverse regulatory record naming him personally could be located. But WealthWave itself publishes no officers beyond one name, no board, no ownership, no financial statements and no income disclosure of its own; it is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau; and its Georgia registration details could not be verified, leaving a 2015-versus-2012 founding-date conflict unresolved. Its own site footer states that it is a marketing company and that it "is not an affiliated company of" the organization whose agents actually sell the insurance - so the entity taking the subscription, book, event and designation money formally disclaims connection to the entity that issues the contract and pays the commission. The branding layer is markedly less transparent than the licensed layer beneath it, and it is the branding layer that does the recruiting. That inversion, plus the two-sided ledger, is the whole of the mark-down.
Product reality & demandWould a rational buyer purchase this if no income offer existed?
12%
8.0
This is real, and it should be said without hedging. The field sells term life, indexed universal life and annuities from A-rated carriers - principally Transamerica Life Insurance Company, with National Life Group and Pacific Life named in a plaintiff-side source and the legacy Western Reserve Life family appearing by name in the compensation tables - to retail households, alongside disability and long-term-care cover in the United States and segregated funds and guaranteed interest accounts in Canada. Life insurance bought by a family with dependents is a product a rational buyer purchases with no income offer attached, and the contracting organization states that every provider it partners with must be rated A or higher. The scale is externally corroborated by a listed parent rather than by the company itself: over 95,000 licensed agents at the end of 2025 and a record 30% increase in individual new life sales in 2025 against 2024. A recruitment-funded scheme does not surface in a Dutch-listed insurer’s operating result as record individual life sales. The reservations are product-suitability ones rather than existence ones: the plan’s points machinery mechanically favors the highest-payout family, which is indexed universal life at 126.5 points against a 100% table, and that product carries index caps, participation rates, escalating cost-of-insurance charges, premium loads and a ten-to-fifteen-year surrender schedule while being sellable on a state life license obtained after twelve to sixty hours of coursework and a multiple-choice exam. That asymmetry is how United States law is written, not something the company did.
Participant economicsReal cost in, realistic money out, and whether they publish the numbers.
10%
3.0
The governing figure is the contracting organization’s own dated disclosure: an average of $11,443 paid to life-insurance-licensed agents in the United States and Canada in 2025, revised 6 March 2026, with the disclosure stating explicitly that agents are independent contractors responsible for their own business expenses and that those expenses are not included. Read that number against what it excludes. It is a mean, not a median, in a hierarchy where the top field levels average in the hundreds of thousands, so the median is a small and undisclosed fraction of it. It includes overrides and bonus money concentrated at the top. It blends Canadian dollars with United States dollars at par, which inflates it. And it counts only licensed agents - everyone still in the onboarding program, who by definition earned nothing, is outside the denominator entirely. Against that mean sits a "run the system" year-one cost of roughly $5,392 and an upper configuration near $11,515, so a participant on the full stack who earns the average nets about $6,000 for a year’s work. A participant on the minimum viable configuration of roughly $482 nets about $11,000, and that difference is entirely within their control - which almost no recruiting material frames. The organization’s own successive disclosures also show that between 2014 and 2018 the average for a life-only Senior Marketing Director fell from $45,043 to $40,669 while the highest reported figure for the top field level rose from over $7 million to over $9 million. The middle of the leadership pyramid got poorer while the top got richer, on the operator’s own numbers.
Price-to-valueWhat the same capability costs on the open market.
8%
4.0
The carrier products themselves are fairly priced to the client - the premium is the carrier’s, not the hierarchy’s - and the same Transamerica, National Life Group and Pacific Life contracts are available to a producer through ordinary independent brokerages at street-level commission, without any of the layer above. That is most of the case for this score. What has no open-market equivalent is the materials layer. A Book Club subscription is $217 a month, shipping a case of 62 copies whether or not the previous case moved, of a book whose $16.99 "retail price" is a reference price essentially nobody pays because consumers receive the printed book free from an agent and the ebook free in thirty-minute, eight-minute and two-minute versions. That is $2,604 a year, more than four and a half times the entire cash cost of getting licensed in a cheap state. Two company-operated stores price the same title differently - $5.00 a copy in single cases of 62 stepping down to $3.50 at volume, against $125 for a case of 20 at the other, which is $6.25 - a 79% spread with no cross-reference, so a participant buying from the wrong store overpays substantially. The software tier compounds it: Pro at $39 to $49 a month plus four add-ons at $8, $8, $19 and $10 comes to about $94, while the VIP tier is $413 a month and its only stated differentiator is that the add-ons are included. That is 4.4 times the à-la-carte sum of its own published contents, on a checkout page that still carries unreplaced Lorem ipsum placeholder text. The offsetting credits are real and are why this is not lower: the Basic platform tier is genuinely free, no purchase is a condition of any advancement, and the licensing fees the organization quotes are honest - it tells recruits exams cost "approximately $100" when the actual national range is $29 to $96.
Payout sustainabilityCan the company fund the plan out of margin, or only out of inflow?
8%
8.0
The funding source is the strongest fact in the file. Every dollar of commission and override flows from carrier commission on premium written to third-party households, distributed through a contract-level schedule from a points pool calibrated on products from a carrier owned by a listed insurer. Nothing in the payout depends on recruit inflow: there is no entry fee that becomes anyone’s income, no inventory purchase, no pack, no autoship and no minimum personal volume. The pool is finite and disclosed - on fixed business, business development takes 65%, generational overrides 27.5% across six capped generations, supervision 1% and the three bonus pools 6.5%, summing to the 100% field pool - and the reference indexed family pays 126.5 against that 100% table, which is a very high total field payout for a life product and is the structural reason the architecture can support four override layers plus three pools. The plan is thirty-five years old, has survived an ownership change, and now sits under a parent reporting a EUR 1.7 billion full-year 2025 operating result, up 15%, with record individual new life sales. Persistency is measured with a 120-day seasoning definition, a 75% floor and a 100% clawback, which is a plan that cares whether the customer keeps paying. The reservations are forward-looking rather than present: the parent has announced a reinsurance transaction on part of a secondary-guarantee universal life block and is redomiciling to the United States with the holding company to be renamed by 1 January 2028, so the carrier’s appetite for the exact product that funds the override layers is a strategic variable entirely outside the field’s control.
Marketing conductIncome claims, regulator run-ins, hype, deadline stacking.
7%
3.0
The corporate copy is conservative and carries document control codes, both organizations supply pre-approved marketing libraries, and a dated earnings disclosure exists - all genuine credits. Everything else in this dimension is bad. Survivorship-selected earnings are presented on a public recruiting page under tenure headings: "Tier 1 (0–3 Years Experience) — $68,403," then $239,950 and $753,615, where the footnotes restrict every figure to agents already at Senior Marketing Director, Executive Marketing Director or CEO Marketing Director level who also sold at least one policy in the year. The footnotes are accurate and complete; the presentation invites a recruit to read the left column as years in the business and the right as what they will earn, which is the prominence-and-selectivity problem the state advertising model regulation exists to reach. Field-produced decks circulating publicly claim "$7,000 – $10,000+ monthly income" for a full-timer at the 65% contract level, against a disclosed annual average of $11,443 - roughly an order of magnitude. A recruiting funnel sells "No layoffs" and "Earn Without Limits" with no earnings disclosure on the page at all. A paid designation is described by its issuer, and repeated by WealthWave, as "FINRA recognized" and even as approved by FINRA so it can appear on business cards; FINRA maintains a public list of professional designations as an investor-education resource and does not accredit or endorse them, so the framing invites exactly the inference that a securities regulator has vouched for the credential. And a recruiting comparison sets $158 trillion of financial assets against $34 trillion of real estate market value and $24 trillion of retail sales as though all three were industry sizes - a balance-sheet stock compared with two flows. Recorded separately, and stage-labeled exactly: a California wage-and-hour and PAGA action alleging misclassification of sales agents as independent contractors settled for $65 million gross, roughly $43 million net, across approximately 380,000 agents, with a final approval hearing set for 28 October 2025 in San Francisco County Superior Court. That is a settlement of a California statutory employment claim against the contracting insurance organization, not against WealthWave, and no admission of liability is reported in any source. Pleadings described a recruiting operation in pyramid terms; pleadings are allegations. What the settlement does establish is the size of the class - 380,000 people through one state’s class period against a current North American network of 95,000, which is the arithmetic signature of high churn.
Operator terms & exitWho owns the customer, what you forfeit, how hard it is to leave.
5%
2.0
This is the worst dimension in the file and the facts are specific rather than atmospheric. There is no published vesting schedule anywhere. The exit page says a terminating agent will receive "commission vesting information if applicable" - conditional, unspecified, and communicated only after the resignation email has been sent. So the single term that decides whether this is a career or a treadmill is disclosed after the decision to leave is irrevocable. Against that, the liability running the other way is explicit and permanent: advanced commissions are clawed back if a client cancels, in the organization’s own words, "even if it’s after you leave"; negative balances become debit balances that transfer with the participant into a new hierarchy and roll up to an upline who pre-signs acceptance of the debt; and an existing debit balance at another insurance agency is a disclosable item on the application form itself, which tells you how routine agent indebtedness is in this industry. On departure the participant keeps their state license in the United States, which is correct and creditable, but loses their carrier appointments, and is contractually restricted from asking or encouraging clients or other agents to follow them and from taking or using client files, with those obligations continuing after termination. There is no published orphan-policy or renewal-assignment rule. Errors-and-omissions cover is claims-made, so the tail liability is the departing participant’s to keep paying for after the income stops. And the plan reserves a further transfer of property between participants: on promotion to Senior Marketing Director an exchange leg moves upward to the upline, and if the new Senior Marketing Director is later demoted for losing their license it does not come back. The full agent agreement and the associate acknowledgment are not public, so non-solicitation scope and duration, any arbitration clause, any class-action waiver and choice of law are all unknown before signing. The asymmetry in one sentence: the chargeback is permanent and travels with you; the renewal entitlement is "if applicable" and is shown to you afterwards.
Weighted composite
5.68
C-

Dimension profile

Further from center is better. Hover any point.

Comp structure& Koscot 6.0 Securitiesexposure 9.0 Ownership &track record 4.0 Product reality& demand 8.0 Participanteconomics 3.0 Price-to-value 4.0 Payoutsustainability 8.0 Marketingconduct 3.0 Operator terms& exit 2.0

Hard caps that bind here

Ceiling at C+ field-produced income claims running an order of magnitude above the operator’s own disclosure. Decks circulating publicly tie "$7,000 – $10,000+ monthly income" to a 65% contract level and forty hours a week, against a disclosed annual average of $11,443 before expenses; a recruiting site sells "Earn Without Limits" with no earnings disclosure on the page; and a public recruiting table presents $68,403, $239,950 and $753,615 under tenure headings whose footnotes restrict every figure to agents already at senior field level who also sold at least one policy. No cap binds this file - the weighted arithmetic already lands at C−, below this ceiling. It is recorded because marketing conduct carries only 7% of the weighting while housing one of the two worst facts in the record, and a reader is entitled to know that the composite understates it.
Ceiling at B- a vesting schedule that is disclosed only after you resign. The exit page promises "commission vesting information if applicable" in the confirmation that follows a termination request, so the term deciding whether renewals survive departure is unknowable until departure is irreversible - while chargebacks are stated to survive it expressly, "even if it’s after you leave," and debit balances follow the participant across hierarchies. This ceiling also does not bind: the arithmetic sits well below it. It is recorded because exit terms carry just 5% of the weighting, so those two dimensions together account for 12% of the score while holding the two facts a prospective participant would most want weighted heavily.

The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.

Sources consulted

What we read

Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.

  1. World Financial Group Earnings Disclosure (United States/Canada), last revised 6 March 2026 - "In 2025, World Financial Group Insurance Agency, LLC, its subsidiaries, and World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Canada Inc. paid an average of $11,443 to life insurance-licensed agents in the U.S. and Canada", with agents identified as independent contractors responsible for their own business expenses
    Income disclosureTier 1World Financial Group, Inc. (a Transamerica/Aegon company) · 2026-03-06archived copy

    The contracting organization’s Earnings Disclosure for the United States and Canada, last revised 6 March 2026 - an average of $11,443 paid to life-insurance-licensed agents in 2025, with an explicit statement that agents are independent contractors responsible for their own business expenses and that those expenses are not included

  2. U.S. Compensation & Advancement Guidelines, WFGIA and TFA, updated January 2022 (PDF) - the advancement ladder to SMD/EMD/CEO MD/EVC and above, generational overrides of 12/6/4/3/1.5/1% fixed totaling 27.5% (21.5% variable) across six capped generations, the Base Shop / Super Base / Super Team bonus pools split 40/30/30, pool eligibility at "25,000 base shop net points with three (3) or more recruits; or 30,000 base shop net points with less than three (3) recruits", the 75% Net Point Ratio and 75% persistency with 100% chargeback
    Compensation planTier 1World Financial Group Insurance Agency, LLC and Transamerica Financial Advisors, Inc. (field-hosted copy) · 2022-01archived copy

    The official United States Compensation and Advancement Guidelines, updated January 2022 - contract levels of 25/35/45/50/65%; generational overrides of 12/6/4/3/1.5/1 totaling 27.5% fixed and 21.5% variable across six capped generations; supervisory overrides of 1% fixed and 7.75% variable; bonus-pool contribution of 6.5% fixed split 40/30/30; pool eligibility at "25,000 base shop net points with three (3) or more recruits; or 30,000 base shop net points with less than three (3) recruits"; a 75% net point ratio; 75% persistency with 100% clawback; 120-day seasoning; the full advancement ladder; the anti-gaming footnotes; the Marketing Director cap on representatives registered with any other broker-dealer; and the worked example of a $185-a-month premium producing $2,775 to the field

  3. "How To Quit World Financial Group" - WFG's own resignation page: the termination confirmation "will include important details regarding your contract status, including commission vesting information if applicable"; chargebacks payable "even if it's after you leave"; the commissions advance balance on the portal; claims-made E&O and the need for tail cover; and the surviving restrictions on asking or encouraging clients or other agents to follow you and on taking client files
    Policies & proceduresTier 1World Financial Group, Inc.archived copy

    The contracting organization’s own how-to-quit page, document code 4985683 – 11.25 - "commission vesting information if applicable"; chargebacks payable "even if it’s after you leave"; the commissions advance balance line on the agent portal; claims-made errors-and-omissions tail; restrictions on asking or encouraging clients or other agents to follow you and on taking client files, surviving termination; and confirmation that the United States license is not tied to the contract

  4. World Financial Group Insurance Agency v. Olson, No. 5:24-cv-00477-EJD (N.D. Cal.) - Order denying preliminary injunctive relief, quoting the Agent Agreement's two-year post-termination non-solicitation, confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions verbatim
    Court recordTier 1U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (via GovInfo) · 2024archived copy
  5. "What to Expect as a WFG Agent" - "Many of WFG's agents earn their license within three to four months"; the $15 per month U.S. Platform Fee; pre-licensing education of $20–$250 paid to education providers; exam fees "approximately $100"; and the mandatory E&O requirement
    Company documentTier 1World Financial Group, Inc.archived copy

    The contracting organization’s agent-expectations and business-model pages - the statement that many of its agents earn their license within three to four months; the $15-a-month platform fee and two-month grace period; pre-licensing education stated as $20–$250 paid to education providers; exam fees stated as "approximately $100"; and the tier table of $68,403 / $239,950 / $753,615 with footnotes restricting each figure to Senior Marketing Director, Executive Marketing Director or CEO Marketing Director level and to agents who sold at least one policy in 2024

  6. "Become a Life Insurance Agent" - WFG business-model page carrying the $68,403 / $239,950 / $753,615 tier table with its footnotes restricting each figure to Senior Marketing Director, Executive Marketing Director and CEO Marketing Director level and to agents who sold at least one policy in 2024
    Company documentTier 1World Financial Group, Inc. · 2024-12-31archived copy
  7. WealthWaveONE pricing panel - the Pro plan and the $8, $8, $19 and $10 monthly add-ons, all requiring the Pro plan
    Company documentTier 1WealthWave, LLCarchived copy

    WealthWave’s own properties - the convention-site legal footer stating that it is a financial education and financial services marketing company and "is not an affiliated company of" the insurance agencies concerned; the WealthWaveONE pricing panel showing Basic free, Pro at $39/$45/$49, VIP at $413 and add-ons at $8, $8, $19 and $10, with the platform profile requiring an agent ID issued by the contracting organization; the HowMoneyWorks store showing $16.99 retail, cases of 62 at $5.00 down to $3.50, $310 a case and the $217-a-month Book Club with its $155 historic price; the second store at $125 per case of 20; and the event page pricing the CFEd designation at $1,295 plus a $500 annual registry fee plus $500 per class taught

  8. WealthWaveONE plan selector showing the Basic/Pro/VIP tiers at $39, $45, $49 and $413 a month
    Company documentTier 1WealthWave, LLCarchived copy
  9. HowMoneyWorks online store - $16.99 retail, volume pricing at 62 books per case from $5.00 down to $3.50 a book, and the Book Club subscription at $217 a month for one case, restricted to "our Financial Educators only. Educators Code # required"
    Company documentTier 1WealthWave, LLC / HowMoneyWorksarchived copy
  10. WealthWaveONE CFEd®/AFEd designation program page - the Certified Financial Educator and Associate Financial Educator programs, the $100 a month Registry participation and renewal after the first 12 months, and the $50/$45 a month AFEd track
    Company documentTier 1WealthWave, LLCarchived copy
  11. "Aegon reports second half year 2025 results", 19 February 2026 - WFG licensed agents up to 95,740, a record 30% increase in individual new life sales in 2025, EUR 1.7 billion FY2025 operating result (+15%), and Transamerica's 67% share of WFG US Life sales
    Company documentTier 1Aegon Ltd. · 2026-02-19archived copy

    Aegon’s second-half 2025 results, published 19 February 2026 - over 95,000 licensed agents in the distribution network, a record 30% increase in individual new life sales in 2025 against 2024, a full-year operating result of EUR 1.7 billion up 15%, and the announced redomiciling and holding-company rename by 1 January 2028 together with a reinsurance transaction on part of a secondary-guarantee universal life block

  12. Aegon Ltd. Form 6-K of 19 February 2026 furnishing the 2H 2025 results, including the World Financial Group distribution table (95,740 licensed agents; 36,871 multi-ticket agents; WFG total new life sales 360)
    SEC filingTier 1Aegon Ltd., filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 2026-02-19archived copy
  13. BrokerCheck report for Transamerica Financial Advisors, LLC, CRD# 16164 / SEC# 8-33429 (PDF) - 19 final regulatory events, 3 arbitrations and 3 bonds disclosed, including the December 2020 FINRA AWC on variable annuity exchanges, mutual fund share classes and 529 plans
    RegulatorTier 1Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) BrokerCheckarchived copy

    FINRA BrokerCheck for Transamerica Financial Advisors, LLC, CRD 16164 - nineteen final regulatory events, three arbitrations, and the five most recent actions: a December 2020 FINRA acceptance-waiver-and-consent (neither admitted nor denied) with censure, a $4.4 million fine and $4,354,000 in restitution for supervisory failures across variable annuity exchanges, mutual fund share classes and 529 plans; SEC settled administrative orders in March 2019, August 2018 and April 2014; and a settled FINRA matter in July 2015

  14. BrokerCheck firm summary - Transamerica Financial Advisors, LLC (CRD 16164)
    RegulatorTier 1Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) BrokerCheckarchived copy
  15. In the Matter of Transamerica Financial Advisors, Inc. - SEC settled administrative and cease-and-desist order, Advisers Act Release No. IA-5150, 11 March 2019 (mutual fund share class selection and 12b-1 fees; $6,023,072.68 disgorgement and prejudgment interest)
    RegulatorTier 1U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 2019-03-11archived copy
  16. Tricia Yeomans v. World Financial Group - official court-approved settlement website for the California class and PAGA settlement (class of persons designated as independent contractors performing services in California from 28 December 2014 to 31 December 2023; final approval hearing 20 October 2025, Dept 301, San Francisco Superior Court)
    Court recordTier 1Court-appointed settlement administrator, Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco · 2025-10-20archived copy

    Legal trade-press reporting and a tertiary encyclopedia compilation on the $65 million gross / roughly $43 million net California wage-and-hour and Private Attorneys General Act settlement across approximately 380,000 sales agents, San Francisco County Superior Court, final approval hearing 28 October 2025, alleging misclassification as independent contractors, settled with no admission reported; and on the Canadian insurance-conduct chronology - an April 2023 Ontario enforcement notice, a May 2023 supervisory undertaking, and a May 2024 CAD $50,000 administrative monetary penalty for compensating an unlicensed agent who wrote 58 policies, that individual separately fined CAD $80,000

  17. "Judge to approve $65M World Financial Group PAGA settlement", 28 October 2025 - approximately $43 million net to class members across roughly 380,000 sales agents alleged to have been misclassified
    ReportingTier 3Daily Journal · 2025-10-28archived copy
  18. Yeomans v. World Financial Group Insurance Agency, Inc., No. 3:19-cv-00792-EMC (N.D. Cal.) - original class action complaint (Exhibit 1 to the notice of removal), alleging the "massive pyramid scheme" recruiting structure, the $100 non-refundable application fee and misclassification of Associates as independent contractors
    Court recordTier 1Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco / U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal. (via CourtListener RECAP) · 2019-02-13archived copy
  19. FSRA enforcement record - World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Canada Inc. (license 26687M): Notice of Proposal 9 April 2024, Final Order 2 May 2024, news release 30 May 2024, administrative monetary penalty CAD $50,000
    RegulatorTier 1Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario · 2024-05-02archived copy
  20. FSRA Notice of Proposal, 9 April 2024 (PDF) - Gurpreet Singh Ghuman, Industrial Alliance and World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Canada Inc.: 58 life insurance policies placed while unlicensed; CAD $50,000 proposed against WFG under s.403(1) and CAD $80,000 against the individual
    RegulatorTier 1Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario · 2024-04-09archived copy
  21. FSRA Order to Impose an Administrative Penalty of CAD $50,000 on World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Canada Inc. (PDF)
    RegulatorTier 1Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario · 2024-05-02archived copy
  22. Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation (#275), as revised and adopted February 2020 (PDF)
    RegulatorTier 1National Association of Insurance Commissioners · 2020-02-13archived copy

    NAIC materials and third-party licensing surveys - Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation #275 as revised February 2020, adopted in 48 states, with New York extending a best-interest standard to life insurance as well as annuities from 1 February 2020; Advertisements of Life Insurance and Annuities Model Regulation #570, which reaches digital and social media and producer presentations; and 2026 fifty-state licensing cost tables giving exam fees of $29–$96, state totals of roughly $57 to $405, course costs of $49–$400, and continuing education of 24 hours every two years at $75–$150 a cycle

  23. Advertisements of Life Insurance and Annuities Model Regulation (#570) (PDF) - insurer responsibility for all advertisements "regardless of by whom written, created, designed or presented", including producer presentations
    RegulatorTier 1National Association of Insurance Commissionersarchived copy
  24. NAIC insurance topic: Annuity Suitability and Best Interest Standard - 48 states have adopted the 2020 Model #275 revisions; the New York DFS best-interest rule for life insurance as well as annuities took full effect 1 February 2020
    RegulatorTier 1National Association of Insurance Commissionersarchived copy
Unable to verify

What we could not get

  • The vesting schedule. "Commission vesting information if applicable" is the entirety of the public disclosure, and it is delivered only in the confirmation that follows a resignation. No schedule, no percentage, no qualifying period and no orphan-policy or renewal-assignment rule could be located anywhere.
  • Whether any hierarchy override is paid on book, subscription, event or designation purchases. This is the single most important open question in the report. Nothing was found in either direction. If uplines earn on the materials their downlines are culturally expected to buy, the soft mandate becomes a hard conflict and the compensation analysis changes materially.
  • Any rule excluding policies written on the agent’s own life, their spouse or their immediate family from the personal net points used for advancement. Up to half of a Senior Marketing Director qualification may come from personal production, and no such exclusion was found - though absence of a located rule is not proof of absence, and the non-public field manual may contain one.
  • The Product Guide compensation percentages. The plan document repeatedly directs the reader to the current Product Guide for compensation percentages on all diversified product lines, and that document is not public - so the actual percentage paid on any specific carrier’s specific product sits in a file a prospect cannot see before signing. Whether 126.5 points to the field is still the live figure could not be confirmed either.
  • Actual persistency, lapse and surrender experience for the block the field writes. The 75% floor the participant is held to is disclosed; the base rate against which they should price their own chargeback risk is not, by either organization. Independent actuarial work confirms that indexed universal life lapse rates rose across all policy years between 2015–18 and 2019–20, but the numerical rates sit behind a paid data package.
  • Median agent earnings, any earnings figure that includes unlicensed associates in the denominator, and the licensure conversion rate - what proportion of onboarding-program entrants actually obtain a license within their nine months. None of the three is published anywhere. The 2024 disclosure figure could not be retrieved and the 2023 figure of $6,534.77 rests on a weak third-party source.
  • The full Agent Agreement and the Associate Acknowledgment and Non-Disclosure Agreement. Neither is public, so the scope, duration and geography of the non-solicitation covenants, the confidentiality definition, any arbitration clause or class-action waiver, the choice of law, the termination-for-cause grounds, the indemnity and the debit-balance rollup rules are all unknown before signing.
  • WealthWave’s own corporate facts: its Georgia registration details, whether the LLC and an apparent Inc. are distinct entities, its officers or board beyond one named principal, and its revenue, margin or ownership - third-party estimates span $69 million to $500 million, which is an absence of data rather than a range. Also unpriced: the full platform-fee schedule above the $15 base, the errors-and-omissions premium as a standalone figure, the VIP feature list said to justify $413 a month, standard convention pre-registration, and event ticket prices.

Not advice

This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.

Who writes this

Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.

Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.

  • Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
  • The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
  • Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
  • No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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Common questions

WealthWave - frequently asked

QIs WealthWave a pyramid scheme?
No court or regulator has found it to be one, and the structural evidence cuts substantially in its favor on the money question. Compensation is denominated entirely in premium written to third-party households; there is no inventory, no pack, no autoship and no minimum personal purchase for commission eligibility; no fee paid by a recruit becomes anyone else’s income; generational overrides are capped at six generations totaling 27.5% of the field pool, less than half the writing agent’s own top level of 65%; and persistency is measured on a tracked block with a 75% floor and a 100% clawback of bonus money when breached. A scheme indifferent to whether the customer keeps paying does not build that. The scale is corroborated by a listed parent reporting over 95,000 licensed agents and a record 30% rise in individual new life sales in 2025. The serious criticism is different and it is real: advancement is recruiting-gated at every single level, generational overrides do not exist below Senior Marketing Director, reaching that level requires ten licensed downline agents, and the bonus pool explicitly discounts required production by 16.7% for recruiting three people - in the same document that states no income is earned for recruiting. The fair reading is that the money is real and comes from customers, and the career is a recruiting career.
QHow much do WealthWave agents actually earn?
WealthWave itself publishes no earnings disclosure at all. The governing figure comes from the contracting insurance organization whose agency contract the field holds: an average of $11,443 paid to life-insurance-licensed agents in the United States and Canada in 2025, last revised 6 March 2026, with an explicit statement that agents are independent contractors responsible for their own business expenses and that those expenses are not included. Four caveats matter. It is a mean, not a median, in a hierarchy where senior field levels average in the hundreds of thousands, so the median is a small undisclosed fraction of it. It is cash flow including overrides and bonuses, not just personal commission. It blends Canadian and United States dollars at par. And it counts only licensed agents, so everyone still in the onboarding program - all of whom earned nothing - is outside the denominator entirely. The other figures the field is shown are survivorship-selected: $68,403, $239,950 and $753,615 appear under tenure headings, but the footnotes restrict every one to agents already at Senior Marketing Director, Executive Marketing Director or CEO Marketing Director level who also sold at least one policy that year. Field-produced decks claiming "$7,000 – $10,000+ monthly income" sit roughly an order of magnitude above the disclosed average.
QHow much does it cost to join WealthWave?
The fees are small and the real cost is not a fee. Entry is $100 for an unlicensed associate application, plus $25 when the license issues, or $125 for someone already life-licensed. Pre-licensing coursework runs $49 to $400 and state exam, application and fingerprint fees run from about $57 in Michigan to over $405 in Illinois. A platform fee of $15 a month follows, after a two-month grace period. Then comes the optional-but-culturally-expected WealthWave layer: software at $39 to $49 a month plus four add-ons totaling about $45, or $413 a month at the VIP tier whose only published differentiator is that the add-ons are included; a Book Club subscription at $217 a month for 62 copies of a $16.99 book that consumers receive free; a designation at $1,295 plus a $500 annual registry fee plus $500 per class taught; and $100 convention tickets before travel. Assembled, the minimum viable configuration is roughly $482, the "run the system" configuration about $5,392, and the upper configuration about $11,515 - against a disclosed average annual cash flow of $11,443 before expenses. The larger cost is time: no compensation of any kind may be paid before licensure, and the company’s own expectation is three to four months.
QWhat happens to your clients and renewals if you leave WealthWave?
This is the weakest part of the arrangement and the facts are specific. You keep your state license, which is correct and creditable - in the United States the license is not tied to the contract. You lose your carrier appointments once the organization notifies the carriers. Clients, client files and downline agents are all restricted: the exit page states the contract restricts asking or encouraging clients or other agents to follow you and restricts taking or using confidential information including client files, with those obligations continuing after termination. Chargebacks are explicitly permanent - if a client cancels a policy, in the organization’s own words, "even if it’s after you leave," advanced commissions may have to be repaid - and negative balances become debit balances that transfer with you into a new hierarchy and can roll up to an upline who has pre-signed acceptance of the debt. Errors-and-omissions cover is claims-made, so the tail liability is yours to keep funding after the income stops. And vesting is the term nobody publishes: a resigning agent is promised "commission vesting information if applicable" in the confirmation that arrives after the resignation. No vesting schedule, and no orphan-policy or renewal-assignment rule, could be located anywhere.
QIs WealthWave a securities investment, and is it regulated?
Two separate questions that are constantly conflated. On the participant’s own capital: there is no securities exposure. No capital contribution, no deposit, no buy-in, no promised or projected return, no revenue share, no equity, no token, no staking, no pool of participant funds and no balance to withdraw - the fees pay for license processing, a background check, software and books at stated unit prices, and the free software tier is real. The only balance that exists is a debit balance the participant owes, which is the opposite of a security. On what is sold to clients: fixed indexed universal life and fixed indexed annuities are not securities under federal law, after Rule 151A was vacated in 2010 and Dodd-Frank preserved state insurance regulation. Variable universal life, variable annuities, mutual funds and 529 plans are securities, and are sold only by the registered subset of the field through the affiliated broker-dealer Transamerica Financial Advisors, LLC, whose BrokerCheck record shows nineteen final regulatory events, all settled, the largest a December 2020 FINRA consent carrying a $4.4 million fine and $4,354,000 of restitution for supervisory failures. On the insurance side, no state Department of Insurance order, FTC action or self-regulatory case naming WealthWave, LLC could be located. Note also that a UK Financial Conduct Authority warning listing from February 2025 for a similarly named firm concerns a different company at a different domain, wealthwaveapp.net, and a warning listing is not a finding of liability.
Who wrote this report

Author, editor and publisher

C
Written by Claude AI
Reviewed by Rob Fore · Published by Listech Inc · July 30, 2026

This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - WealthWave’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.

Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.

The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.

Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.

About the author and our conflicts  ·  Contact the editor  ·  Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com

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Right of reply

Corrections

Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from WealthWave than from a reader.

Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.

This address reaches a person, not a form. We do not require a takedown demand, an NDA or a lawyer to accept a correction, and we do not remove a report because a company disputes its conclusion - only because the underlying facts turn out to be wrong.

Other published reports

Every report is written to stand alone. Graded on the same nine weighted dimensions and the same six legal tests. Twelve of 107, spread across the grade bands.

See all 107 published reports →