Clark/Bardes Holdings Inc., a national executive compensation and benefit consulting firm, has officially launched Bolinet.com, an online service designed to help banks manage the life insurance programs they own.
The launching occurred in mid-September after a four-month pilot program.
Administering bank-owned life insurance is generally a detail-heavy endeavor. It involves tracking reports from various carriers and administrators, which come to banks on differing forms and schedules.
The Web site, free to banks that register to use it, enables bank administrators to view all the life insurance contracts that it owns, and the performance of these contracts, in one format, said Thomas Wamberg, chairman and chief executive officer of the North Barrington, Ill., company.
Seretis, a Milwaukee-based firm, is managing the site. Seretis gathers plan information from the carriers, organizes the data, and creates the reports and graphs requested by Bolinets users.
Bank insurance administrators can also create customized reports on the contracts through the Web sites Ad-Hoc Reporting tool. Twelve banks have signed up for Bolinet.
Bank-owned life insurance differs from corporate-owned life insurance in that the corporate products are usually built on a variable life chassis. Because corporate-owned life insurance would not qualify for a bank under bank-eligible investment rules, a separate product, bank-owned life insurance, finances employee benefit plans, including not only group medical and life insurance contracts but also deferred compensation and qualified benefit plans.
