ABA Banking Journal - April 2008 - (Page 24)
Community Banking Pass the Aspirin: Questions Customers Ask Today— And The Answers” p.26 2008 ABA NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR COMMUNITY BANKERS REPORT Banks plus insurance: How to make it work Four banks that took different paths to success share what they learned along the way . McCall Wilson, Jr., of The Bank of Fayette County, characterizes the gap between bankers and insurance people this way: “Agents eat what they kill. Bankers want to eat somebody else’s kill.” When Wilson’s company went into the insurance business a few years back, it found that successfully integrating banking and insurance often depended on reconciling two very different ways of looking at compensation. But there was also a very different pair of mindsets arising from the two views. Culturally, bankers still think mainly in terms of salary, while insurance agents think in terms of commissions. So, while referrals from one side of the house to the other are the ideal, insurance agents hate splitting their “kill” with other players. Yet the bankers need an incentive to get interested in referrals from their side. But referrals aren’t always welcome, either, something that the Moscow, Tenn.based institution’s bankers had to get used to. In February, Wilson explained during a session at the ABA National Conference for Community Bankers that bankers, attempting to make good on the synergistic hopes of joining banking and insurance By Steve Cocheo, executive editor H 24 APRIL 2008/ABA BANKING JOURNAL Subscribe at www.ababj.com
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