Bank Association Joins Iroquois Group
The Independent Community Bankers of America has formed an alliance with The Iroquois Group, a national insurance agency cluster network, to provide property-casualty insurance markets to ICBA members with insurance agencies.
Under the agreement, members of the Washington-based bank association would take part in the Iroquois Group cluster arrangement that enables member agencies to expand their product lines and serve more customers by obtaining new contracts with additional insurance carriers. The alliance is established under ICBA Insurance Services, a new corporation within ICBA.
Under the ICBA-Iroquois program, agency volumes are aggregated under the one association. Agencies would have access to lines of business unavailable to them before because they could not reach carrier volume requirements.
Discussions began two years ago with the association, which has close to 4,600 member banking institutions, said William "Twig" Branch, president of Iroquois Group, based in Olean, N.Y. A number of the institutions have small agencies dealing in personal and small commercial insurance, the main lines for Iroquois, he said.
The agreement allows Iroquois to expand beyond its current geographic reach into Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. "We want to grow and this gives us the jump start we were looking for in this part of the country," said Mr. Branch.
Daniel Clancy, director of services and executive vice president of ICBA Insurance Services, said 35 percent of his members operate agencies, and they need the power of numbers to grow in new markets.
"They are small independent banks with small agencies with small premium volume," he said. "It is difficult for many of them to establish carrier relationships. This will let them join a network to aggregate premium volumes and improve their revenue opportunities because they have not been able to qualify" under the premium minimums set by some carriers.
"We looked at other provider networks, and Iroquois was the best partner," he said. "Their demographic fits ours, their members are the same size as ours, and their footprint is similar. They are the same in a lot of areas as our members, and we found a comfort level there."
He said ICBA members would be a part of the Iroquois group and not form a separate organization.
Mr. Branch said ICBA paid "a modest endorsement fee" to Iroquois toward the alliance. Agent members pay dues of $150 a month. Twenty percent of the commission from insurance sales goes to Iroquois and the remaining 80 percent to the agent.
Besides offering access to insurance, Mr. Branch said that some of the members may be looking for advice on how to run an insurance agency, because some are venturing into the agency business for the first time. While not offering consulting services, he said Iroquois would offer advice to those who ask.
"They are a very receptive group of people," he observed. "The membership is committed to making this work."
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, February 6, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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