Financial—AIG

American International Group was the largest insurance and financial services company in the world.

We were asked to conduct a Strategic Review of their European operations to identify products and added value services that would help to establish the AIG brand in Europe, differentiate AIG from local and other foreign competitors and fuel their expansion plans.

Working with AIG’s European and USA based executive teams, a radical transformation of both the European operation and its results was achieved during one of the most turbulent market periods in history.

A brief summary of achievements follows:

• The deployment of our broadband digital infrastructure to enable continuous, realtime, internet based, data, voice and video collaboration between the USA, the UK and Europe.
• The identification and development of a unique value added proposition—the provision of advanced “financial advisor services” to financial intermediaries via “The Six Pillars of Success.”
• The renaming, repositioning, and rebranding of the com- pany as “AIG Financial Advisor Services.”
• The identification of an existing AIG product as suitable for the various European markets and conditions.
• The rebuilding, repositioning, rebranding, renaming and launch of that product as “AIG Foundation Investments.”
• The reorganization, retraining and refocusing of the existing staff and corporate structure to enable the delivery of the new service propositions and product to occur simultaneously in Germany and Italy.
• The development of a viable business plan and budget with subsequent buy-in and approval of both by AIG Corporate based on the new product and value added proposition.
• The development, creation, legal approval (and translation into German and Italian) of a broad range of powerful and unique sales tools capable of selling AIG, AIGFAS, and AIG Foundation Investments to Financial Advisors, Institutions, and Retail Investors in both Germany and Italy.
• The recruiting and integration of experienced specialist sales and support staff.
• The development and implementation of systems, controls, and reports to manage the rapidly expanding organization.
• The continuous development of the additional sales and marketing tools necessary to drive sales and results.

All of this was achieved:

• Under intense time and other pressures while geographically spread between New York, Los Angeles, Bermuda, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

These activities created a radical improvement in results:

• In Germany, AIGFAS (as a new entrant) moved from #90 to ranking in the top 12 sellers within two years.
• In Italy, AIGFAS (as a new entrant) achieved in 5 months, sales that took one of the largest established foreign competitors 5 years to achieve—and its single premium sales topped $400 million in less than two years.