Deals & People June 30, 2011

Great West Names Chief Marketing Officer

Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company announced that Joe Greene is joining the firm as senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
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Greene will be responsible for executing Great-West’s branding strategy, implementing the company’s strategic marketing campaigns, and leading its marketing team. He will report to Mitchell Graye, Great West’s president and CEO.

Greene joins Great West from Bernstein-Rein Advertising in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was senior vice president and director of marketing and strategic planning. He has previously held senior marketing and product management positions at American Century Investments, American Express Company, Inc., Chase Manhattan Bank, and OppenheimerFunds, Inc.

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Greene is a graduate of Hamilton College and earned his MBA from Columbia University. His has served as past chairman of both the Investment Company Institute’s Marketing Committee and the Mutual Fund Education Alliance.

In recent years Great-West has focused on growing its financial services business and selling its healthcare division in 2008. “Joe will play a key role in helping us re-brand Great-West as a leading provider of financial services – ensuring that our positioning and messaging resonate with our current and future customers,” said Graye.

Products June 30, 2011

New Version of Provider Search and Due Diligence Tool Launched

Asset International’s Strategic Insight and PLANSPONSOR have unveiled a new version of its Pathfinder provider search tool.
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Pathfinder 2.0 is a web-based tool that enables financial advisers with a retirement plan practice to:

  • Compare and select retirement plan providers that best match plan sponsor needs
  • Retain clients with a higher degree of efficiency
  • Increase productivity and close-ratio for new business

Pathfinder 2.0 has an individual adviser version as well as an enterprise version for Broker Dealers, Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs) and Defined Contribution Investment Only (DCIO) firms that seek to provide additional services to advisers.

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With Pathfinder 2.0, financial advisers receive:

  • The ability to tailor a search across the nation’s leading recordkeepers
  • Quick and easy access to an extensive library of RFP/RFI questions
  • Detailed side-by-side comparisons of the 401(k) industry’s top service providers
  • Access to Strategic Insight’s mutual fund and ETF investment data
  • Customized client reports

For more than a decade, Pathfinder has provided retirement plan advisers with the most up-to-date and comprehensive database of the nation’s leading retirement providers. Today Pathfinder clients include the nation’s leading broker/dealer, independent broker dealer, RIA and DCIO firms. The new release is built on Salesforce.com’s Force.com web-based platform.

“In an increasingly complex and demanding regulatory environment, alongside a heightened awareness of the importance of fee transparency, Pathfinder 2.0 offers retirement plan advisers a proven tool and process to facilitate the complex business of conducting a comprehensive RFP. Pathfinder also allows advisers to more easily standardize and document their search and due diligence process,” said Kevin Ng, Pathfinder Product Manager.

For more information about Pathfinder 2.0 and to register for a free demo, visit http://www.planadviser.com/pathfinderregistration.aspx. And for an in-depth analysis about why provider search tools may help streamline your practice, see “Search Tools – Match Set” in PLANADVISER’s 2011 Buyer’s Guide. 

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