Lion Street 2020 Annual Report - Report - Page 4
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L IFE INSUR ANCE
James Joyce
Executive Vice President
Below are highlights from the year:
The life insurance industry and carriers faced multiple
challenges in 2020 with further pressure from low interest
rates, massive changes in underwriting in response to
•
3 0 new Firms joined Lion Street in 2020, passing
COVID-19, and forced acceleration of digital and fluidless
our continued standards of excellence, ethics
programs. Despite these headwinds, Lion Street grew its
and revenue. Many of them have only met and
life premium by 10% in 2020, resulting in more than $150
experienced Lion Street via Zoom ... the best is yet to
million of weighted premium and strong growth across
come for them: our community, culture and quality
distribution from our Independent Firms, Corporate Life
of people.
and newly launched Institutional Life.
•Product sales continued to diversify with a continued
uptick in Variable UL products up 40% YOY, as
Lion Street launched eStreet in 2020, which is the
they have innovated to offer competitive pricing and
industry’s first end-to-end, multi-carrier electronic
features desired from other products.
platform for informal and formal applications. The tool
leverages AI to assist with carrier selection, integration
with carrier-accelerated underwriting programs,
electronic signatures and policy delivery.
Our unparalleled expertise in the large case market
continued to be a driver of growth, with 300+ cases with
$100k+ of target premium written this year. The Specialty
Markets team continued its position as a market authority
in helping professionals navigate the changing carrier
reinsurance and capacity restrictions on jumbo cases
and parameters for underwriting foreign nationals and
premium finance.
With these strong results, Lion Street continues to grow
its position as one of the largest national distributors of
life insurance with significant relationships and influence
with our carrier partners.
Independent Life
•Index UL maintained its leading product position in
Lion Street, further fueled by the exclusive rollout
of Nationwide’s New Heights IUL, featuring
an indexing strategy powered by Annexus in
collaboration with JP Morgan, Barclays and the NYSE.
•Our continued commitment to Firm Building was
never more evident than in 2020, beginning with the
launch of a Business Resiliency Center as an online
hub for all Firms to access real-time content on best
practices, market intelligence, and ideas from other
Firms and subject matter experts.
• M
y BackOffice Team, an outsourced staffing
solution for Lion Street firms, saw its utilization rate
double in 2020, which underscores the value of our
“Firm Behind the Firm” model.
Independent Firms
2020 saw strong growth across our Independent Firms,
with increases in all core metrics. Key drivers of growth
were 165 Firms and 617 Producers doing business, and 30
new Firms added in 2020.
As the challenges of 2020 occurred, financial
professionals looked for insights and assistance from
their business partners, and too often they found they
were alone. 2020 revealed to many Firms that other
organizations and companies pulled inward and didn’t
put effort into supporting their best Firms. These Firms
saw something welcoming and positive happening at
Lion Street.
2020
New Lion Street Firm
Lion Street Firm