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Facilitating life & disability sales for P-C agencies BISYS units, in partnership with ASPN, provide access to products and marketing help By Dave Willis By nature, human beings are creatures of habit. We do what we know. We like the familiar. We stick with what works. It’s true in our personal lives and it’s true in business. That may be the reason why so many P-C agents—hugely successful P-C agents, in fact—write so little life insurance. In the process, they miss out on thousands of dollars of income. Mike Martini is out to change all that. Martini, president of Bisys Life Insurance Services, is trying to make it easier for P-C agents to take advantage of the life insurance market share they’ve been letting slip by. His staff at LifeSource, a Bisys unit, works with P-C agents to bring a “life department in a box” to the agency, and help uncover missed opportunities within the agency’s own customer files. “For example, a P-C agent has a client who owns a trucking company,” Martini says. “The agency provides the coverage on that fleet, but not the life insurance or financial services business.” Interestingly, he adds, most P-C agents are licensed to sell life insurance products, but they don’t spend much time doing so. That may be because it’s just not a core part of their business. Or maybe they feel they don’t have the know-how. “We bring life insurance selling expertise and life insurance product and market expertise to the P-C agency,” Martini adds. “Our charge is to keep the life revenue with the agent.” The benefits go beyond increased revenue. “Everybody wants to provide a full range of services to their clients and keep client relationships as tightly managed as possible,” he says. Reaching agents through ASPN LifeSource has teamed up with ASPN, the Agency Specialty Product Network, to make its services more broadly accessible to P-C agencies. ASPN, a unit of Aon Corporation, partners with provider companies to market their products to independent retail agencies throughout the United States. Jerry Tegan, ASPN president and CEO, says that since its inception, ASPN has worked to help independent agencies expand and grow their business by providing them access to products, programs, and services that help them better serve their clients’ needs. “We bring the P-C agent to whom ASPN markets one more product that they can offer their clients, to meet client needs more thoroughly, and to make the relationship that much stronger,” Martini says. For a P-C agency, the process is rather simple. “We go in and provide a virtual life department—with everything from point-of-sale help to a back-office capability—right inside the P-C shop,” says Dick Langhough, senior vice president and national sales manager for the LifeSource P-C Division. “We bring to independent agencies with whom ASPN works a provider service they didn’t have before, a story they couldn’t tell before.” According to Martini, all the P-C agent really must do is broach the subject. “It can be as simple as saying, ‘I understand you probably have a life insurance policy on yourself. Have you done any business planning or estate planning? What about business continuation? We can help you,’” he says. LifeSource picks up there, delivering the life insurance, business continuation, wealth accumulation, and estate planning expertise needed to close the sale. “We bring that skill set to the table,” Martini notes. “The ASPN P-C agent can outsource that to us, and we can present the concepts, complete the sale, and handle the entire back-office processing.” The LifeSource team consists of a few dozen regional directors—licensed insurance agents—who accompany P-C agents on calls, plus a support staff to handle processing. LifeSource has relationships with more than 175 insurers and provides access to a range of life, long term care, disability, annuity, and life settlement products. Providing value through relationships Even in its first couple of months of existence, the LifeSource relationship with ASPN has delivered results. According to Langhough, one of his regional directors, Mitch Long, drove past a large agency near his home almost every day and night. He had called on the agency’s life operation for some time. But he never got face time with agency leadership. Because the agency was working with another life insurance provider, it didn’t see the need to change. At Long’s request, ASPN’s Southeastern Regional Vice President, Cliff Harrison, called his contacts in the P-C side of the agency, which is an ASPN priority agency, and used those connections to get to the non-P-C folks. “We got the appointment, and spent the better part of an hour telling our story,” Langhough says. “By the next week, Mitch had made an appointment to go back and talk to one of the key people, and the agency is setting up meetings with its commercial and personal lines departments.” According to Langhough, the agency is like a lot of others he encounters. “They have an active benefits department, but their individual life production is rather low,” he says. “A lot of agencies lump the benefits and life all together. It turns out, in most cases, they do about 95% benefits and 5% everything else. And the ‘everything else’ is usually done as an accommodation. The agencies aren’t usually marketing it.” LifeSource enables these agencies to take life and financial planning out of the “accommodation” bin and place it front and center of what they offer. By doing so, they not only boost value and revenue but also defend their client base, Martini believes. “Every business owner has life insurance, and they’re buying it from someone,” he says. “It may be from the P-C agent down the street—a competitor. Once that competitor is in the door, the P-C business is at risk.” That’s why Martini describes what LifeSource offers as more than life insurance. “This is a risk mitigation strategy and a relationship-building strategy for them, on a variable cost,” he explains. “If somebody wants to get into the business—or more active in it—all they need is a licensed life insurance agent working in an established licensed agency. Once they have those, we can work with them.” Above and beyond the norm Along with LifeSource, ASPN partnered with another Bisys life insurance unit—The Hanleigh Companies. Hanleigh is a managing general underwriter for high-limit disability and related products. They generally serve agents who work with highly compensated individuals, such as entertainers, sports figures, and corporate executives. The company operates in the Lloyd’s market and through a domestic facility underwritten by a U.S. insurer. “Most domestic insurance carriers these days want to limit the amount of total benefit any one individual can have,” says Graham Southall, Hanleigh vice president and underwriting manager. “We are able to come in on top of the existing benefits and supplement their income up to or towards the level they’re seeking.” For instance, a corporate executive earning $500,000 a year may have an existing monthly disability benefit of $15,000. But the salary dictates there should be, perhaps, another $20,000 a month on top of that. That’s where Hanleigh helps. They can do the same with agents working with athletes and entertainers. “P-C agents don’t operate just in the corporate world. They’re involved with people in entertainment and sports,” Southall says. “The ASPN relationship with Hanleigh gives them an opportunity to tap professionals who deal with these individuals every day. “We can innovate and create products because we do our own in-house underwriting,” he adds. “We can bind coverage, and underwrite and issue policies so the client gets much faster service than they might have anticipated.” Some of the more extraordinary work Hanleigh has done is in the entertainment business. For instance, it placed $25 million of permanent total disability coverage for an internationally known singer to protect against a career-ending injury or illness. It also designed and placed a combined death and disability policy, with $50 million payable to a major television network, which had pre-sold $100 million of advertising for a TV show that was dependent almost entirely on a single personality for its success. Beyond some of the glitz and glitter of what Hanleigh does, Southall emphasizes the value of its relationship with ASPN and P-C agents. “What we offer is not a P-C product, per se,” he says. “But we deal with P-C agents because they’re talking with the top people in commercial organizations, and they come across special situations all the time.” People like to deal with people they know, Southall notes. And, yes, corporate executives, sports figures, and entertainers are people, too. He adds, “They’d rather deal with the contact they know, and say, ‘Can you help me with this?’” By tapping Hanleigh, P-C agents can respond with an unqualified “yes.” According to Tegan, the LifeSource and Hanleigh partnerships have been successful from the start. “Agents are quick to offer their clients products, programs, and services they are familiar with and in which they have confidence,” he says. “LifeSource and Hanleigh offer such products and services, and agents can expand and grow their business by using these new resources as they work to meet all their clients’ needs.” * For more information: |
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