By Erik Holm
AIG's name is no longer mud.
Under a pilot project launched last year, the life-insurance
unit at American International Group Inc. (AIG) found it got better
results selling coverage under the AIG brand than it did using a
name that didn't indicate an affiliation with the bailed-out
company, a senior executive said.
AIG is now expanding the effort to sell life insurance directly
to consumers by directing them to a website called AIG Direct, said
Jay Wintrob, the head of AIG's life-insurance unit, SunAmerica
Financial Group.
"We had higher response and sell-through rates using the AIG
name," he said at a conference in New York on Wednesday. "So we've
expanded our AIG Direct lead-generation efforts."
The results of the pilot project show the AIG brand has greatly
improved since the depths of the financial crisis, when its $130
billion bailout prompted criticism far and wide, from the halls of
Congress to the faux newscast on "Saturday Night Live," prompting
AIG's then-chief executive, Edward Liddy, to declare the AIG name
"so thoroughly wounded and disgraced" that it would probably need
to be changed.
Amid the furor, the company retooled marketing efforts, removed
the AIG logo from identity badges and even renamed entire units of
the company in an attempt to limit the damage from its massive
government rescue. AIG has now repaid the bulk of the bailout, but
remains majority-owned by the U.S. government for now.
The pilot program involved advertisements for AIG Direct, which
currently tells potential customers they can get "the protection
your family needs from AIG, a world leader in insurance." AIG
Direct is a marketing division of a unit called Matrix Direct,
which sells term life insurance directly over the Internet from
carriers including AIG's American General Life Cos. and ING Groep
NV's (ING) ReliaStar Life Insurance Co.
The improved sales using the AIG Direct brand were in contrast
to results when the coverage was sold through Matrix Direct,
Wintrob said.
Wintrob also said AIG's SunAmerica is poised to expand sales of
variable annuities through a variety of channels. Rivals including
MetLife Inc. (MET) have retooled their variable annuity offerings
in recent months to make them less generous, while Hartford
Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG) exited the business
altogether.
"We have the capacity, distribution capability, risk controls
and financial discipline to capitalize on the growing demand in
this market as some of our competitors pull back," Wintrob
said.
Write to Erik Holm at erik.holm@dowjones.com