MONY Wholesales To Own Agents

By Barry Higgins

June 07, 2002 at 08:00 PM

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NU Online News Service, June 7, 4:19 p.m. – Executives at The MONY Group Inc., New York, are learning a new skill: marketing the company's own proprietary products to its own career agents.

MONY, like many other insurance carriers with a career distribution channel, now gives its agents access to a host of products from outside manufacturers.

"The days of calling an agent ?captive' are over," says Steven Orluck, MONY's chief distribution officer. "The career channel has become more independent."

The new "out-brokerage" arrangements have increased the pressure on many carriers' marketing and product development teams, industry experts note.

MONY is coping by taking a more active approach to promoting its products within the career channel. "We're not just relying on local agency management to make sure MONY proprietary products are appropriately positioned," Orluck says. "We're treating our career channel as a customer, with choices."

MONY is acting on that philosophy by asking some of its external wholesalers to target career agencies. "We've got wholesalers who are out doing battle in the brokerage market everyday," Orluck says. "Now they are going to our internal career agencies as well."

MONY is still waiting to see the results of the internal wholesaling effort, but the company is expecting it to increase proprietary production within the career channel, Orluck says.

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