An Oregon company that sells investment products through banks has beefed up its sales ranks in an effort to get more clients.
Marketing One, a Portland-based company that helps 80 banks sell mutual funds and annuities, earlier this year doubled the number of executives charged with getting new bank clients by naming three new vice presidents to develop business in the East, Midwest, and Southeast.
The most recent of the new appointments was made last month, when R. Barry Lowery was brought in as vice president overseeing new business in the Southeast.
Mr. Lowery came from a competing seller of investment products, Midlothian, Va.-based Compulife, where he had supervised the sale of investment products through 20 banks.
In January, Marketing One also promoted its public relations director, Michael Maher, to vice president of sales in the Midwest.
Additionally, in January Michael Burgoyne, who had overseen Marketing One's accounting, trading, and operations, was named vice president for sales in New York and New England.
Mr. Maher said the company is now ready, "all hands on deck," to look for new business, after spending the past two years installing investment product programs at First Fidelity Bancorp., Lawrenceville, N.J., and Wells Fargo & Co.
Kenneth Kehrer, president of a Princeton, N.J.-based consulting firm that bears his name, said Marketing One may be trying to reach out to smaller banks by hiring Mr. Lowery. That's because at Compulife Mr. Lowery specialized in community banks.
A community bank focus could be important, since Marketing One, like other bank investment sales specialists, has been stung by large banks bringing programs in-house.
Wells Fargo, for example, brought its mutual fund sales operations in- house at the end of 1993, causing a decline of $800 million in mutual fund sales for Marketing One last year, Mr. Kehrer said.
Marketing One continues to provide annuity products to the San Francisco bank.
