"Could you explain what you mean by 'cross selling'?" That was an actual question posed to me by someone at a very large, very national insurer. Now granted, this question came from a media coordinator in the PR department, and I'm hoping within the company's business units there is a greater understanding of just what cross-selling is. However, the question does reveal cross-selling and up-selling are hardly institutionalized practices within insurance.
But why? In the wake of the Citigroup-Travelers deal in 1998 and the demise of Glass-Steagall cross-selling prohibitions in 1999 when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act was passed, pundits had foretold an imminent great shift, where selling multiple financial services products to customers would turn the insurance industry on its head. Converge or perish!
However, after Citigroup sold Travelers–first the property/casualty part to St. Paul and then, last year, the life portion to MetLife–those same pundits interpreted the news as the death knell for cross-selling in financial services.
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