Zurich-Kemper Investments Inc. is betting that a 20-year veteran of the banking industry can parlay his contacts into new business.
The Chicago-based mutual fund company has hired Gary N. Kocher, 50, as a senior managing director in its financial institutions division. He began work last week.
"I've been in the banking industry for a long, long time, and have a lot of friends," said Mr. Kocher.
He arrives a few weeks after leaving Little Falls, N.J.-based Bisys Group Inc., the leading administrator of bank-managed mutual funds. At Bisys, Mr. Kocher served as an executive vice president for business development.
Zurich-Kemper's hiring of Mr. Kocher represents a new strategy by the fund company to boost its presence in the bank marketplace. Instead of merely hawking portfolios to investment representatives, the company is offering to help bank senior executives map out long-term strategies for their brokerage units and mutual fund families.
To hook between five and 10 new bank clients that are among the largest in the country, Zurich-Kemper is launching a "strategic partnership" program next month aimed at financial institutions.
Mr. Kocher wouldn't reveal many details, but he said part of his job will include pitching subadvisory services to bank mutual funds, which would involve Zurich-Kemper managing the assets in bank portfolios.
"I've had some preliminary conversations with a bank which has two or three ho-hum equity funds but needs some gorilla portfolios to separate it from the masses," he said.
Mr. Kocher, who before working at Bisys and a company it bought oversaw consumer banking at Star Bank Corp., will also promote Zurich-Kemper portfolios to bank trust departments. The trust area is a new frontier for Zurich-Kemper.
Mr. Kocher will work in tandem with Henry Schulthesz, Zurich- Kemper's senior vice president overseeing sales through banks. Mr. Schulthesz's job, in addition to managing current accounts, will include implementing the strategies of new bank clients that Mr. Kocher signs up.
Zurich-Kemper, which manages $38.3 billion of assets, faces stiff competition in the bank marketplace, said Dennis Dolego, a partner at Financial Research Corp., a Chicago-based company that tracks fund company market share.
Once the top seller of funds through banks, Zurich-Kemper's market share has fallen over the years as the well-known bond fund shop fell into the shadows while the stock market boomed.
But the company is "taking the right steps" toward a comeback, Mr. Dolego said. Last year's acquisition of Dreman Value Advisors Inc., a small conservative stock fund company, has helped put Zurich-Kemper back into the public eye.
