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
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