disability and long-term care. A lot of our business is what most banks provide-and that is credit life insurance, mortgage life insurance, and a home equity line of credit insurance. And we have offered those products both through the mail and direct to the customer. But we've also offered them on the platform, on the assumption that some customers come to the branch, even though others will never be in the branch."
He wanted to make sure that the arrangement with the third-party marketer reflected The Dime 's character as a bank.
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Reflecting the bank's character
Keppel wanted to make sure that the arrangement with the third-party marketer reflected The Dime's character as a bank.
"In making a joint venture with a third-party marketer," he said, "we tried to take into account what The Dime and its already existing structure looks like. We're a $20 billion community bank, serving 750,000 households, with 85 branches. Most of our platform people are licensed. We have a pretty good concentration of life insurance sellers, because of the amount of time that we've been doing it. Therefore, in our case, it's a bank product. So 65 percent of our producers do 80 percent of the sales, instead of the traditional 80-20 rule."
Insurance sales vary, depending on the branch. "Some of our branches are huge," Keppel explained, "and produce a lot of premiuni-$250,000 in premium income in the amounts that we usually sell-that is, under $50,000 in whole life coverage. And in those particular branches, selling 510 policies in a year is a lot. We do a number of different programs."
But The Dime didn't want to depend on outsiders to