Many banks, bank-holding companies, boutique financial advisory firms, insurance companies and other financial services require their representatives to take the Series 6 examination.
Once you pass the Series 6 and the attendant state law exam (Series 63), your sponsor (employer) will register you with the SEC and FINRA as a Limited Representative.
While this does not confer the extensive responsibilities of a General Securities Representative (Series 7), nevertheless it does include the type of financial products that most financial service professionals offer to their clients: mutual funds, variable insurance and variable annuity contracts.
The variable insurance and annuity products require that you also pass an insurance exam to be licensed with your State Insurance Commission.
In general the Series 6 examination is easier to pass than the Series 7. It consists of 100 multiple choice questions, which must be completed in 2 hours and 15 minutes.
An annuity is the OPPOSITE of life insurance!
- Both are bets you make with an insurance company, but they are opposite sides of the bet. With a life insurance policy you are betting that you will not live past your actuarial mortality date*. With an annuity you are betting that you will live well past that date.
- With a life insurance policy you pay a monthly premium so that your heirs will get a lump sum payout when you die. With an annuity, you pay a lump sum up front and get a monthly payout for the rest of your life. If you are right, you may well get much more back over your lifetime than your original lump sum.
- When you are young and employed and have a young family, life insurance is a way of providing income to your family even if you are not around to earn a salary.
- When you are older and the kids are grown and out of the house, it may be time to reverse your bet. Plunking down a lump sum for an immediate annuity means you will get a monthly check for the rest of your life whether you continue working or not.
- When you are older and your assets have grown, they may well exceed the value of your life insurance policy. Moreover, premiums for term-life insurance become prohibitively expensive the older you get. Do you still need to keep paying for that life policy or do you want to get paid just for living a hopefully long and fruitful life?
* Your “actuarial mortality date” is that point in the future when half the people your current age and gender will already be dead.
