Family Office
SEI links client invest accts, insurance payments
Bill-presentment connects clients' asset-management and insurance
holdings. SEI's Advisor Network is giving advisors a way to let
their clients automatically deduct insurance-premium payments
from asset-management accounts.
Aimed primarily at insurance-company-based advisors -- who
account for about 30% of the 6,400 advisors who use SEI's
advisory management, investment and client-relationship platforms
-- the "Insurance Premium Payment Program," or IP3, is meant to
help them deepen client relationships by linking insurance and
investment planning.
As far as SEI can tell, IP3 is the first example of investment
and insurance entities working together on a bill-presentment
program of this type. It's available to Advisor Network users at
no charge.
One bucket
"For the client, it's a matter of convenience," says Kevin Barr,
head of program development at SEI Advisor Network. "The depth of
the advisor-client relationship hinges on advisors' ability to
deliver on clients' needs on all levels."
On that level IP3 is rather like SEI's initiative to make it
possible for end clients to integrate their SEI-held accounts
with personal-accounting software like Quicken, says Barr.
It benefits advisors by providing a "one-bucket" view of client
holdings, facilitating paperless, "straight-through" processing,
and am entrée to cross-selling insurance and investments, Barr
adds.
IP3 has been on a trial run at Park Avenue Securities since late
in 2006. The program "enables us to offer clients a full range of
expertise, ultimately expanding the relationship to include other
types of investments," says James Clements, a senior v.p. at New
York-based Park Avenue Securities. "IP3 really helps bring
advisors into the role of wealth management and brings that
holistic approach clients are now expecting."
Oaks, Pa.-based SEI administered $382.4 billion in mutual fund
and pooled assets and managed $190.0 billion in assets on 31
March 2007.
Park Avenue Securities is a subsidiary of Guardian Life
Insurance. -FWR
Purchase reproduction rights to this article.
