Insurers that have traditionally been involved in financial planning are expanding into a more comprehensive version of that rolewealth management. The term has become one of the latest industry buzzwords, designed to address investors overall investment management needs from a broader perspective.

In the insurance world, wealth management has become linked to advanced-planning concepts. This type of planning may use such products as extension IRAs, estate tax planning, and business continuation planning. Youre looking at a very flexible picture of the clients planning horizon based on his cash inflow and outflow, which yields the clients net worth. You can then use the clients net worth goals to support retirement planning, college funding, estate planning, and estate distribution goals, says Lisa H. ODay, vice president of advanced sales/program development and management at Jefferson Pilot Financial, a life insurance and annuity company based in Greensboro, N.C.

Insurers in general are making use of more IT tools such as contact management and other customer relationship management (CRM) programs in gathering information about their insurance clients and in making better use of the information they already have. Assimilating otherwise outsourced banking or financial planning services, insurers take advantage of these opportunities to cross-sell. They use contact management programs to create databases of customer information to implement more efficient customer interactions. One of the challenges insurers generally face is having to append the sparse data they have on customers from outside sources so they can get a better sense of whats going on [with that customer], says Kathleen Khirallah, senior research analyst at TowerGroup.