While Western & Southern Financial Group may be best known for offering life insurance to individuals, in the April 2019 LEAD Magazine article “Helping to Better Serve Your Employees,” J K Klaiber writes about a few of the ways Western & Southern also helps businesses. Through its Institutional Markets unit formed in 2017, Western & Southern offers employers help with pensions and benefits packages, and offers banks a way to provide more financial services to their clients.
Klaiber interviewed three Western & Southern executives for his article: John Bultema, senior vice president of Institutional Markets; David DiMartino, vice president of Institutional Markets; and Robert J. DalSanto, president of Insurance Profillment Solutions (IPS).
Bultema said that Western & Southern formed the Institutional Markets unit to focus on new markets where Western & Southern’s strengths could be leveraged. The company is a great partner to businesses because of its strong balance sheet and superior credit ratings.
One of the ways Institutional Markets helps employers is with pension risk transfer (PRT). Employers that offer pensions, from small manufacturers to Fortune 500 companies, can use Western & Southern’s PRT product, PensionAssistTM, to replace pension benefits with annuity payments. This pension risk transfer reduces the employer’s workload and expenses, and increases efficiency.
DiMartino described another service provided by the Institutional Markets unit: bank-owned life insurance (BOLI). Launched in 2016, Western & Southern’s BOLI product is a variable universal life insurance policy sold by Western & Southern member companies that provides a tax-efficient method of funding employees’ benefit packages.
Also within the Institutional Markets unit is IPS, led by DalSanto. IPS provides a cobranded, direct-to-consumer digital insurance platform built specifically for banks, wealth management firms and finance companies. The platform allows bankers to “manage the insurance conversation without managing the paperwork.”
LEAD Magazine is part of Lead Tribune Media Group, a Cincinnati-based publisher, and is targeted to business executives.
About Western & Southern Financial Group
Founded in Cincinnati in 1888 as The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, Western & Southern Financial Group, Inc. (Western & Southern), a Fortune 500 company, is now the parent company of a group of diversified financial services businesses. Its assets owned ($54 billion) and managed ($25.3 billion) totaled $79.3 billion as of March 31, 2019. Western & Southern is one of the strongest life insurance groups in the world. Its seven life insurance subsidiaries (The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, Western-Southern Life Assurance Company, Columbus Life Insurance Company, Gerber Life Insurance Company, Integrity Life Insurance Company, The Lafayette Life Insurance Company and National Integrity Life Insurance Company) maintain very strong financial ratings. Other member companies include Eagle Realty Group, LLC; Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc.;1 IFS Financial Services, Inc.; Touchstone Advisors, Inc.;1 Touchstone Securities, Inc.;2 W&S Brokerage Services, Inc.;2 and W&S Financial Group Distributors, Inc. Western & Southern is the title sponsor of six major community events every year, including the Western & Southern Open, a premier event in the U.S. Open Series played each August by the world’s top-ranked professional male and female tennis players.
1 A registered investment advisor.
2 A registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC.
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