Team Commercial Lines Effort Praised

Its platform offers 20 well- rated insurance companies, whose products are sold through a customer call center staffed with 40 licensed professionals.

“Under our model, we can parachute our producers right into banks, so they act as a bank employee,” Dawson says. “Branches across the Union Planters organization can receive local support from licensed professionals trained in local business practices, standards and regulations.”

For its part, Union Planters offers 200,000 commercial customers in the 12 states where it does business.

Under the pilot program, the two Financial Keyosk reps work through the banks lending officers to cross-sell small businesses on business owner policies, workers compensation and commercial auto products, along with group health and other employee benefit plans, as well as term life insurance.

Financial Keyosk hired the reps, with input from bank agency executives, Dawson notes.

It can quickly hire more as the bank expands the program, Collins says.

That should be soon. Results in Memphis impressed Collins to the point where she is ready to try a similar effort in one of the banks Midwest branches within a few months, she says.

Financial Keyosk offers products from such carriers as the Principal Financial Group, Des Moines, Iowa; Kemper Insurance Cos., Long Grove, Ill.; and Zurich North America, Schaumburg, Ill., a unit of the Zurich Financial Services Group and the parent company of Financial Keyosk.

“For a bank to sell insurance, integrating an agency doesnt pay off,” argues Dawson. “The decision banks have to make is, trade insurance on our own, or outsource? And, if you outsource, can you keep the same quality as inside people would give you? With our model, you maintain control, but the capital requirement is a lot less than with having your own agency.”

Financial Keyosk is off to “a slow start,” Dawson acknowledges, due to a need to hammer out privacy concerns, revenue splits and other contractual issues with clients like Union Planters. He expects, however, to announce additional bank deals soon, including one with a bank on the West coast and another in the East.

“Were happy with the sales potential of banks, and its surging ahead,” Dawson says. “We use the analogy that theres a lot of gold in bank customers, but you have to get through a lot of granite before you get to the gold. It took us six to eight months to get rolling [with Union Planters], but its starting to work. “

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, July 8, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.