We offer our life insurance products primarily through retail channels, including
brokerage general agents, financial institutions, independent agents, and financial
advisers. We utilize specialty agents to distribute our BOLI and variable COLI
products.
We distribute our SPIAs primarily through financial institutions, BGAs and
broker-dealers, with sales and marketing support provided by our wholesalers.
We distribute our deferred annuities primarily through financial institutions
and broker-dealers, with sales and marketing support provided by our wholesalers.
By providing our distribution partners with high levels of service and attractive
products, we seek to cultivate strong relationships. The attractiveness of our
products to distributors depends on many factors, including the interest rates
we credit initially and through the life of our traditional fixed annuity contract
and the cap rates we offer on our FIA products.
We sell our employment-based benefits products through several types of distributors,
including third party administrators (TPAs), brokers, consultants and administrative
services only (ASO) insurance carriers. ASOs are fully-insured carriers that
offer administrative services to employer self-funded health plans and also
distribute medical stop-loss insurance to those employers. We aim to leverage
our leadership position in the medical stop-loss market to continue expanding
sales of other employment-based benefits products and build our reputation as
a multi-line carrier.
We work closely with our distribution partners to ensure that we are well-positioned
to offer benefits solutions to employers that participate in private health
insurance exchanges. Our limited benefit medical product is currently offered
on exchanges, and we are focused on expanding sales through this channel. We
believe our strong relationships with premier benefits brokers across the country
provide a platform for distributing our products and driving sales growth. Additionally,
we plan to expand our network of benefits brokers and consultants to further
increase our sales opportunities.