1st Bank Vet Brings Broker-Dealer Savvy to Compulife, a Marketer

After four years at First Bank System's broker-dealer, Richard Adams has turned up as director of business development at the third-party marketing firm Compulife.

Mr. Adams, who was national program manager at First Bank before resigning in January, joined Compulife last month to help the Midlothian, Va., firm build its business, he said in a telephone interview last week.

Compulife supplies banks with software Mr. Adams said he would have found useful during his banking career. Before joining Minneapolis-based First Bank, Mr. Adams had worked for Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco.

"We all pay a lot of lip service to being user-friendly, but I'm just an average Joe, or Joanne, on the computer," Mr. Adams said. After a recent presentation of Compulife's computer training software at a bank, someone in the audience told him it is "dummy-proof."

He took it as a compliment, he said.

Mr. Adams went to work for Compulife just as it was bought by Investors Financial Group, a brokerage services company in Atlanta. Investors Financial markets insurance and provides broker-dealer services to financial advisers. It bought Compulife to expand into investment products marketing. Compulife was the industry's 13th-largest marketer in 1996, according to Kenneth Kehrer Associates, Princeton, N.J.

Mr. Adams' experience in bank brokerage programs should help the new company serve bank clients, according to Mr. Kehrer, president of the bank brokerage consulting firm.

Compulife's software is called MoneyGuide '97. Bank brokers, who are trained and supplied by Compulife, enter a customer's financial information and goals, and the program makes asset allocation recommendations rather than specific product pitches, Mr. Adams said.

"I see Compulife as being on the cutting edge of our business, and that attracted me," he said.

Compass Bank, Birmingham, Ala., has switched its mutual fund administration and distribution duties to SEI Investments from Federated Investors.

The bank's $537 million-asset Expedition funds bring SEI's proprietary bank fund assets under administration to more than $60 billion, ranking it second to Bisys as a fund administrator. Compass' three funds-equity, bond, and money market portfolios-had $308 million of assets at June 9, when the bank switched to SEI.

SEI, based in Oaks, Pa., increased its proprietary bank fund assets under administration by 34% last year.

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