WAYNE, Pa., September 9, 2008 /PRNewswire/ — The Bank Insurance & Securities Association (BISA), in conjunction with Truebridge, has conducted a survey which studied cross-selling investment and insurance products at financial institutions in the United States. This research probed several dimensions of the cross-selling environment across different areas within financial institutions including managers and investment/insurance sales people.

The results reveal what participants feel are the most important factors to successful cross-selling and how their institution is delivering on those factors. It also identifies the differences in how these success factors are ranked between managers and sales people and what action steps would most improve cross-selling.

A copy of the results can be obtained at no charge by going to http://www.truebridge.com/survey-1. Institutions that participated in this survey can obtain a report that benchmarks their results against industry averages.

The Bank Insurance and Securities Association (BISA) is the Association of choice for firms and financial professionals who wish to successfully engage in the distribution of integrated financial services including investments and insurance through depository institutions. Its mission is to support member firms and financial professionals within depository institutions by building a community and providing forums to enhance their professionalism, knowledge, and productivity to help them best serve their clients with a broad array of financial solutions.

• Approximately twice as many participants reported that their firm was satisfied or somewhat satisfied (58%) rather than unsatisfied or somewhat unsatisfied (26%) with cross-selling efforts. A closer look at the differences between management and sales respondents pointed to management’s marginally lower satisfaction with the cross-selling efforts.  This could be driven by the fact that management feels their share of wallet is below what it could be and know they need to improve.

• Mangers had a marginally higher perception of cross-selling investment and insurance products as a core strategy. Over half (52%) of managers vs. 38% of sales people stated that their institution rated it high and very high.  These results may indicate that, despite the relatively modest financial impact that most investment and insurance programs have on a financial institution’s balance sheet today, there is a keen recognition, particularly on the part of management, that it is a critical element going forward.

• When ranking the success factors to cross selling “chemistry / trusted relationship” between sales people and those who are able to generate referrals was the highest (89.2%) and respondents felt that their institution did a pretty good job on their ability to deliver (72.2%). 81% - ability / importance. Above all, this is a personal business and financial institutions are well aware of this. They also think that they are able to deliver on this fairly well, so it is likely that they will continue to focus on this factor.

• Generating referrals from the branches was second in importance (70.2%), but respondents felt that their financial institution lagged far behind on its ability to deliver on this important factor (37.6%). 54% - ability / importance.  The significant gap between importance and ability to deliver points to a real need for improvement in branch referral generation. This seems to be a continuing struggle and may suggest that current techniques are not working and some new strategies are needed.

• The financial institution’s image as a place to go for more financial needs was ranked third in importance (68.2%), and respondents also felt that their financial institution did not do a good job on delivering against this factor (35.3%). 52% - ability / importance. 
  

• Lead generation from the website was ranked fourth in importance (29.3%), and respondents felt that the financial institution’s ability to deliver lagged very far behind (10.8%). 37% - ability / importance.

• The least important factor for success in cross selling was lead generation from mail and statement stuffers (27.4%), and the financial institution’s ability to deliver also lagged behind (12.3%). 45% - ability / importance.  Traditional methods of generating leads are seen as least important and delivery lags behind. This may be from the lower and lower response rates that direct mail has been able to achieve. More and more product ads may simply confuse people – they get too much so they ignore it.