Great-West Retirement Adds Sales Staff
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, CO, August 12, 2009 - Great-West Retirement Services has hired eight additional internal wholesalers to further enhance the support it provides its external sales force and their financial adviser and third-party administrator (TPA) distributors. With the recent additions, the external to internal wholesaler ratio has improved to 2:1 from 3:1.
"By adding to our internal wholesaler team, we're able to provide increased service and support to both our sales force and their distributors," said Bill Harmon, vice president of 401(k) sales. Financial advisers and TPAs are critical to our sales success, so we work very hard to assist them."
Great-West Retirement Services assigns each internal wholesaler to a regional sales director. Internal wholesalers then support their respective sales director in cultivating relationships with financial advisers and TPAs. "We're already benefiting from their efforts - with small- to mid-market prospects up more than 49 percent Q2 over the same quarter last year," Harmon said.
The new internal wholesalers are:
Mike Burke - Calif.
Edward Carlson - La., Texas
Bob Fitzpatrick - Ariz., Idaho, N.D., N.M., Mont.
Tom Geiger -Ill., Iowa, Wis.
Trevor Millberg - Washington, D.C., W.Va., Va.
Jeremy Oaster - Ala., Ore., Wash.
Gina Schimpf -Maine, Mass., N.H., N.Y., Vt.
Amy Turley - Colo., Neb., Utah, Wyo.
The hiring of the internal wholesalers began this spring, bringing the current number of Great-West Retirement Services internal wholesalers to 20. As the external sales team increases, Great-West Retirement Services will continue to hire internal wholesalers to maintain its 2:1 ratio. In addition to tapping internal talent, recent hires have come from firms such as Allianz Group, 1st Global, IKON Financial Services, The Hartford, Lincoln Financial Group and Oppenheimer.
About Great-West Retirement Services
Great-West Retirement Services, a business unit of Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company, is the fourth-largest retirement plan record keeper in the United States, based on total participants at year-end 2008, according to a ranking by Spectrem Group. In all, Great-West Retirement Services provided 401(k), 401(a), 403(b) and 457 retirement plan services to nearly 21,000 plans representing 3.7 million participants and $92 billion in assets at Dec. 31, 2008.
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