Cleveland's National City Corp. is teaming up with the private-label insurance services provider Inslogic Corp. of Columbia, Md., to sell insurance products through National City's Web site.
Through a partnership announced Monday, $85 billion-asset National City plans to offer complete Web service for sales of life, homeowner, and automobile insurance by yearend. Right now, visitors to the bank's Web site who are interested in insurance offerings are being referred to a call center.
Thomas Cook, president of three-year-old National City Insurance Group, said the company realized it had to offer round-the-clock shopping and transaction capability.
"We feel that for the value proposition we offer our customers, we needed to have 24/7 fulfillment and a platform that offers multiple carriers," Mr. Cook said. "Our goal is to have three carriers per product per state" in the banking company's six-state territory of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois.
There are no plans now to add insurance agents to its bank branches, the company says.
Inslogic, which is owned by the Toronto conglomerate Onex Corp., offers products online and by phone from companies such as Prudential and Zurich Kemper Insurance Group.
It has licenses in 12 states, expects to be national by January, and also has PNC Bank of Pittsburgh and KeyCorp of Cleveland as banking company clients.
"We provide choice" to clients' customers and "seamless execution," said Gregory Zehr, senior vice president of marketing at Inslogic. "For the clients themselves, we provide end-to-end solutions where we're utilizing the name of their organization."
National City's insurance business includes a property-casualty agency in Pontiac, Mich., for small and midsize businesses.
National City plans to begin online marketing of additional insurance products for smaller businesses, such as employee benefits, within the next 12 months, Mr. Cook said. The banking company has more than 300,000 small-business customers and 100,000 of its nearly four million deposit customers use its Internet banking services.
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