CCB Financial Corp. of Durham, N.C., is spurning some common strategies other banking companies have used to build an insurance sales operation.
The $7.7 billion-asset company is fashioning an organization built around insurance sales specialists. In essence, bankers need not apply.
"I want someone who knows the insurance business, and I can teach them how to relate to the bankers," said W. Ronald Anderson, who was hired in November to lead the initiative. And CCB is playing down term insurance by quietly offering it as a direct-mail product and not encouraging agents to prospect for term sales.
It has also resisted letting branch employees sell simple insurance products. "We're not licensing platform people to sell insurance," Mr. Anderson said. "They don't know what they are doing" in that business.
The banking company is embracing its new insurance experts, said Stephen Angelis, the president of CCB Investor Services, a unit that oversees both securities and insurance sales.
In fact Mr. Angelis said his decision to hire Mr. Anderson - who had spent 20 years at Paul Revere Insurance Group-was made in part to recruit the insurance expertise that he lacked. Mr. Angelis said his brief effort last year to lead the insurance unit was "a foolish mistake."
Because of banks' short track records in insurance sales, Mr. Angelis said, recruiting insurance salespeople is a challenge. And not having an experienced insurance executive in charge made it even more challenging to attract top-notch salespeople, he added.
Mr. Anderson has hired nine agents with an average of 18 years' experience, and the banking company plans to hire another four by the end of next year.
As for being an insurance expert in a bank environment, Mr. Anderson said he believes access to a set of customers already doing business with the banking company is a boon. "I'm so excited about being inside a bank," he said. "The opportunities are just limitless."
Though Mr. Angelis would not disclose short-term goals, he said he expects insurance revenues to equal brokerage revenues within five years.
CCB's plan is to integrate insurance into its banks much as brokerage activities began to be integrated at CCB four years ago, Mr. Angelis said.
Under Mr. Angelis' direction, CCB was selling some variable universal life, whole life, and a smattering of term policies. But CCB Financial, the holding company for Central Carolina Bank and Trust Co. and American Federal Bank, said it expects strong results from the sale of products like group insurance, disability coverage, and long-term health care.
Long-term health care looks particularly attractive when you consider that half of CCB's 400,000 customers are older than 55, Mr. Anderson said.
