Stonebridge Selling Against Us?

[somarco]

ALL companies sell direct. Some are more obvious than others. And ALL carriers cross sell your clients.

 

[TwiLight]

It has more to do with the crazy contracting rules at Transamerica.

Many Monumental/TPL contracts used to contract with a Separate Deal with Stonebridge for MedSups. Now they will not allow Dual appointments with different TOP NMO/IMO's.

The TPL is just a new offering to make it easier for Contracting.... They want to eliminate the Dual Contracting offered.

 

[Daytona_Guy]

Pretty sure TPL is a different carrier, albeit owned by TA. Ritter is taking appointment applications for TPL now.

No, same exact company, same exact plan.
Transamerica Premier Life is their latest filing name, awaiting approval in the states where they're still going by Stonebridge. They have one rate for brokers and one rate for their call center.

This was confirmed by the folks over there, and they see no problem with it at all.

The difference in the two prices is more divergent in other places.
You can problably only see both using the CSG quote engine:

 

[somarco]

Isn't the "call center" rate for their "group" clients such as One Exchange?

 

[MatthewC]

I know that Stonebridge contracts with a company called LiveOps that has licensed insurance agents. Once you are on a Stonebridge marketing list they mail you like crazy for everything from Final Expense and Accidental Death to Hospital Indemnity. Not sure about Med Sup. Anyway, when a person calls in from one of the mailers, the call goes to a LiveOp agent who gets like $10 to sell a policy. They even have mailers for cash contests where the agent will switch right to a FE sales pitch.... I believe they used be tied to Sears or JC Penney a long time ago too. I never considered Stonebridge to be a trustworthy top notch company. Once they get a name on their books, it's theirs and they will market the heck out of it.

 

[Daytona_Guy]

Isn't the "call center" rate for their "group" clients such as One Exchange?

No, here's the official response from Stonebridge, having read my post.
It should be noted that one of my agents called Stonebridge and was told that the difference in the rate was due to their internal agents having the cheaper rate available. I then sent this to the contacts at AmeriLife who confirmed that was the case, a cheaper rate for their internal call center.

The response from Stonebridge/Transamerica this morning:

"To clarify, both rates that you show are actually for agent distribution – Transamerica Premier does not sell individual Direct except in Florida. There is a business unit under Aegon that sells Direct, but not on TransPremier – it is on Transamerica paper.

What is happening is that there is actually a standard rate, and then a Tier 1 and Tier 2 rate that are 10% and 20% higher for certain applicants that have unhealthy body mass indexes. It looks like the quote engine that you showed did not label one set of rates as Tier 1 so it was not clear why there are two rates. If you will look, the $134.68 is 10% higher than the $122.44 you showed, and corresponds to the Tier 1 rate. The $122.44 rate is available to you and all other agents signed up with us."

 

[kstein]

That is partially correct, but Trans has a direct to consumer product that is less than Stonebridge. They said in Panama that they are in the process of dropping it but as of now they are competiting against us.

 

[sman]

they are competiting against us.

They're doing what against you?

 

[kstein]

Competing but with more emphasis on the tit part!

 

[Daytona_Guy]

That is partially correct, but Trans has a direct to consumer product that is less than Stonebridge. They said in Panama that they are in the process of dropping it but as of now they are competiting against us.

Yeah, that's what I thought I heard from that trip.