Marketing Financial adds instant-term life insurance

Dutch company ING Group chose Marketing Financial as the first company to offer its new instant-term life insurance products, which allow people to get such insurance in a matter of minutes, rather than having to wait weeks to go through the insurance underwriting process. Instant-term life insurance is available only through financial institutions.

“Marketing Financial has a strong presence in the financial institution community,” said Pat Frost, ING director of specialty markets. “They’re a great group to work with, and we feel they have the connections within the financial community to bring this out on a broader spectrum.”

Marketing Financial is a wholesale insurance brokerage, serving insurance companies and financial institutions.

“We provide administrative assistance for them,” Marketing Financial President Alan Lockhart said of his company’s 700 adviser clients from across the United States. “When they utilize our services, it doesn’t bury them in working with something that is an ancillary product for them.”

Access to coverage

Marketing Financial gives its clients access to life insurance – term, universal, whole and variable – as well as disability, long-term care and mortgage insurance and annuities through 35 different companies, including American International Group, ING Group, Lincoln Financial Group, Prudential Financial and Principal Financial.

Steward Insurance, which insures Assemblies of God, began using Marketing Financial’s services about three years ago. “Our agency doesn’t have to hire additional help to expand (into) the nationwide operation that we’ve accomplished with their help,” said Gregory Daniels, vice president of Steward Insurance. “It helps tremendously. You couldn’t put a value on it.”

Lockhart declined to disclose revenues, but he said that Marketing Financial has seen recent growth in the advanced-solutions sector, which comprises benefits such as compensation, executive benefits, estate planning and wealth-transfer planning.

Local presence, expansion plans

Lockhart’s father, Bob, founded Marketing Financial in 1989. Alan Lockhart earned his insurance license in 1986 and joined his father’s company in 1997.

Despite clients nationwide – including Central Bank and A.G. Edwards – Lockhart said the company is working to increase its presence in the local market. Boosting business close to home makes sense for Marketing Financial’s 10 employees – at least for now, he added.

“Until we can be the best we can be right here, there’s no reason for us to put together a more difficult business plan,” he said. “We would almost shoot ourselves in the foot. If one day we have 200 employees, then that would be a different story – we can grow accordingly. But we don’t go out and chase big markets.”

Marketing Financial Vice President Dennis Martinez said the company expects to implement a business model with additional offices in neighboring markets within the next five years.

“We’re uniquely situated geographically,” he said. “We’ve got Tulsa (Okla.), Kansas City, St. Louis and northwest Arkansas less than two or three hours (away). We feel like we’re in the center part of the country, and we can touch a bunch of different markets.”