Sun Life Financial Canada’s new president plans to hit the streets early this year and visit his distributors, getting a feel for the challenges they face.

“I’m going to spend quite a significant amount of time out of the office, meeting with wholesalers and Sun Life career advisors,” says Dean Connor, who presides over the Canadian distribution channels of Toronto-based Sun Life Financial Inc. effective this month.

“I have visits scheduled to financial centres. That will keep up through the year and in ensuing years,” adds Connor, who splits his time between Toronto and Sun Life Canada’s Waterloo headquarters. The first stops on the tour include Richmond Hill, Ont., Ottawa and some Western Canada locations.

Connor, 50, joined Sun Life Canada as an executive vice president in September 2006 after a 28-year career at global consulting firm Mercer LLC, He admits to being somewhat of a rookie when it comes to the intricacies of insurance distribution, so getting to know the business from the advisor’s perspective is an important part of his job.

As much as Connor plans to define his own role, he says an important goal is to add momentum to the growth that Sun Life’s distribution channels experienced under Kevin Dougherty, the former president of the unit. Dougherty moves on to the newly created role of president of Sun Life Global Investments, the new brand for the platform under which Sun Life’s Canadian and U.S. asset-management units operate.

Connor, who holds an honours BA from the University of Western Ontario’s Ivy School of Business in London, Ont., is also an actuary and a fellow of the Society of Actuaries. Previous career positions have kept him close to the insurance and wealth-management sides of the business, but not to retail consumers of financial products.

Born in Hamilton, Ont., Connor returns to southern Ontario after lengthy stints away from home. He was posted to Calgary for three years with Mercer before taking a position in New York as president of that firm’s Americas division, which includes its Canadian, U.S. and Latin American operations.

He gained experience in institutional wealth management at Mercer; he was involved in the launch of the firm’s funds-of-funds business in 2004. Mercer has an investment-consulting arm that advises firms on fund-manager selection for pension plan and wrap programs. “Familiarity with institutional money managers, investment styles and asset-mix relationships have been a part of my life for many years,” Connor says.

Sun Life Canada’s 3,400 career advisors will recognize Connor as the head of Sun Life’s British operations, at which, over the past year and a half, he also oversaw the reinsurance business and corporate underwriting and undertook some strategic planning. That is where he learned the basics of the individual life insurance business that’s integral to Sun Life. The carrier sells participating and non-participating policies in Britain, but there’s no distribution channel of individual agents in that country.

Connor describes Sun Life career advisors, who work in 850 regions across Canada, as a cornerstone of the domestic business. “We will continue to build and support our career sales force group,” he says.

He’ll also focus on growth in other channels, including wholesalers, direct sales and the pension-plan side of the business. “What you’ll see under my leadership is a continued emphasis on multi-channel distribution,” he says.

Under Dougherty, Sun Life’s wholesale business showed dramatic improvement. Premiums rose to $34 million in 2006, up 70% from $20 million in 2005, which was a 113% gain over 2004.

Sun Life Global Investments owns a 36% stake in CI Financial Income Fund. CI is a relatively recent addition, but it has played a strong part in attracting and keeping career advisors onside at Sun Life Canada, says Connor. Sun Life advisors like CI’s products, its brand and its independent voice as a franchise. Training and background material from CI has flowed through Sun Life’s financial centres and branches. In some cases, advi-sors have access to CI’s fund managers as well, says Connor: “It has been positive in terms of sales, but also in terms of keeping advisors.”

LEVEL COMMISSIONS

Sun Life Canada’s career platform is young by industry standards. The average advisor is about 47, eight years younger than the average wholesale advisor. Apart from training and support, a performance-based recognition program and a level commission structure have helped build the platform. This means advisors don’t receive a so-called “heaped” commissions immediately after a sale. Instead, they receive some up-front commission plus something akin to a trailer fee.

@page_break@“It encourages sales,” Connor says, “but also the ongoing servicing of the relationship with the client.”

Among the challenges the company faces is the omnipresent tension that all advi-sors experience with the underwriting part of the business. It’s an issue Connor is taking seriously, and so is the carrier. “It’s become more challenging in recent years for a variety of products,” Connor says, “including critical illness and long-term care, which bring into the equation different underwriting requirements.”

Compared with traditional life insurance products, the underwriting criteria for certain living benefits may require that more clients may be declined or require more information; if clients are accepted, advisors might find that they are rated with a higher premium, Connor adds.

Underwriting friction may be irritating for clients and advisors, but it also ultimately affects the company through financial feedback. So, Sun Life is certainly motivated to improve the underwriting experience, Connor says: “In particular, with respect to the turnaround time, it has a direct impact on sales and ultimately profitability.

“As you can guess, we have a number of metrics by which we measure our performance in underwriting,” he adds, “and it’s an area that we’re working hard on with advi-sors and wholesalers.”

It’s an increasingly important shift to risk-management products that require underwriting. Sun Life was among the early entrants into what is expected to be a very competitive market for consumers interested in the guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit product. The carrier plans to extend the guaranteed benefit in response to Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp. , which announced a similar change to its GMWB product in the autumn.

“We are in exactly the right business at the right time, in terms of addressing baby boomers’ needs for advice and products that help them make the transition from wealth accumulation to predictable lifetime income,” Connor says. “We’re also in exactly the right place to help Canadians deal with the cutbacks in health services that they see from their government and employers.” IE