Fleet Financial Group has rehired a veteran of its mutual fund business to coordinate the development and delivery of retail products by its investment affiliates and insurance partners.
L. Peter Sheehan returned to the Boston-based banking company four weeks ago as senior vice president and director of investments and insurance partnerships, Fleet announced this week. He had spent 13 years at Fleet- most recently as director of investment products marketing-before jumping to Citizens Financial Group, Providence, R.I., in 1994, where he was president of its investment products arm.
Mr. Sheehan is rejoining a company that has amassed an array of affiliates and partnerships since he left.
On Wednesday, Fleet completed its acquisition of Columbia Management Co., a mutual fund company with $20 billion under management. In the first quarter, Fleet expects to close its purchase of Quick & Reilly, the nation's third-largest discount brokerage.
The company also has two insurance alliances-one with Travelers Group for life, disability, and long-term care, and the other with Hartford Financial Services Group for property and casualty policies-within its retail bank.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Sheehan said a big part of his job will be to "make it easy" for customers to get access to products being developed by Fleet's specialized affiliates and partners.
Mr. Sheehan said that ideally customers could "call one entity" and get brokerage and banking needs met at the same time.
Observers said it makes good sense to assign a point person to this task.
"The issue all banks are going to struggle with when they buy business outside their mainstream is how to integrate. You need a champion," said Geoffrey H. Bobroff, an East Greenwich, R.I.-based mutual fund consultant.
Mr. Sheehan will be based in Providence and will report to Douglas B. Stotz, executive vice president of customer and product management in the retail banking division.
In addition to working on product development with the affiliates and partners, he will help devise strategies for selling the products through several distribution channels. These include Fleet's 1,200 branches, telephone banking, PC banking, direct mail, and Internet banking.
He will also coordinate bankwide distribution of insurance products. In the past, Fleet had a separate insurance group that worked with 10 underwriters.
Mr. Sheehan said he may help Fleet find ways to offer traditional bank products through its investment affiliates and insurance partners. u
