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Allstate

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The launch of Allstate financial proved to be a rocky endeavor. Many issues kept the division from growing as fast as the insurance division. One of the main issues Allstate faced was a lack of selling support from their agents. Allstate relies heavily on their agents to sell Allstate products like insurance policies as well as allowing their exclusive agents, whom passes the securities license exam, to sell financial investments such as certificate of deposit, annuities, and mutual funds. When they pushed the new financial products and investments initiative, Allstate set up a new sales quota for these products to incentivize the agents to get licensed. The incentives worked compelling 6,000 existing agents to get licensed however; sales of financial products were weak. Allstate Financials’ main demographic is people over the age of 40; with the main focus being to aid in retirement investing. Allstate’s agents felt that the lack of training provided by Allstate, disregarding the securities exam, wasn’t properly preparing them to sell investments and risk their client’s futures. There are a few different things Allstate could have done to make the Allstate Financial rollout more successful. First, Allstate needs to address the lack of confidence exhibited by their exclusive “personal financial representative” agents. Their agents felt as if the training program was inadequate for investing people’s retirement funds. Allstate should have reworked their training programs and made them more rigorous so only qualified, knowledgeable agents would be able to pass the program. The second issue that Allstate should have addressed was the lack of confidence exhibited by the customers when purchasing investment securities and assets from an insurance agent. To change this, there should have been agents that specialized in selling only investment assets while working only

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