Ross Rogers, the new head of Comerica Inc.'s insurance and securities distribution businesses, came to the Detroit banking company this month from a firm that specializes in separately managed accounts.
So it is not surprising that one way he would like to improve at Comerica is to have it manage separate accounts, currently an outsourced business, in-house. Mr. Rogers joined Comerica June 1 from GlobalBridge, a Minneapolis provider of separately managed accounts, where he was president.
"I think it would be a very nice addition if we were to offer a separate account vehicle," said Mr. Rogers, a corporate senior vice president and the chief executive officer of Comerica Securities Inc. and Comerica Insurance Group Inc. "That could be a very compelling offer for Comerica's high-net-worth clients."
The banking company offers the product now, but the accounts are managed by outside firms. Munder Capital Management, a unit of Comerica, would bring a track record of good performance to the job, Mr. Rogers said, emphasizing that this idea is in its early stages - he has not even discussed it with asset management executives at the bank.
A spokeswoman for Comerica said Munder-managed accounts would not be so much a strategy for going up-market as an effort to offer more choices to clients.
In an interview Thursday, Mr. Rogers said his mandate is to accelerate the expansion of securities and insurance revenue in order "to balance out, in some degree, the revenue and earnings for the company overall."
The 56-year-old executive, who succeeded Michael J. Conway in the post, declined to discuss his plans with much specificity, explaining that he must do more research before setting goals. But these goals should start to take shape by mid- to late July, he added.
Cross-selling to bank customers would be an important area of emphasis, he said.
"This is an opportunity to grow," he said. "It's not the old saw of 'row harder, the skipper wants to water ski,' it's about better cross-selling."
The Comerica that Mr. Rogers has joined is stronger at selling mutual funds and annuities than at selling insurance. Its fee income in 2004 from mutual fund and annuity sales was $64.57 million, good enough to rank it 24th among U.S. bank holding companies, according to Fee Income Ratings Report, a publication of Michael White Associates in Radnor, Pa.
This revenue was 7.4% of the parent's noninterest income.
Sales-related income from insurance, meanwhile, was $13.2 million last year, or 46th among bank-owned insurance operations, according to the White Associates report. The 1.5% of Comerica's noninterest income that insurance supplies puts the bank holding company in the 45th percentile nationally.
Comerica offers life, disability, and long-term-care products; group benefits; and property and casualty insurance to business and individuals. Its Comerica Securities unit manages $13.4 billion of assets.
About 300 securities employees and 70 insurance employees report to Mr. Rogers.
He is in charge of operations, technology, compliance, capital markets, and institutional sales. Comerica's distribution network, including financial consultants, advisers, and private bankers, is run on a regional basis around Comerica's banking footprints in Michigan, California, Texas, and Florida.
In addition, Mr. Rogers has "some team responsibilities" with the regional managing directors - who include his predecessor, Mr. Conway, who becomes the Michigan region's director - but not direct responsibility, he said. He is responsible, though, for overall profits or losses from insurance and securities, he added.
Though Mr. Rogers came to Comerica from a separate account company, he has a broader financial services background. He started as a broker at Merrill Lynch & Co. in 1977, and he was the head of private adviser services at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis when he joined GlobalBridge.
