At the end of April, PPI announced a strategic alliance with ATB Investor Services, which includes the subsidiary ATB Insurance Advisors Inc.Under the arrangement, PPI will establish a sales management team to support and manage the insurance operations of ATB Investor Services advisors, while providing them with sales and marketing support, training and tools.

ATB Investor Services is a subsidiary of ATB Financial – the largest Alberta-based deposit-taking financial institution and a Crown corporation.

In an interview with The Insurance and Investment Journal, Jim Virtue, president of PPI Solutions said PPI has been working with ATB Investor Services in a traditional MGA role since 2007, but now this role has been enlarged to include insurance sales management of 15 advisors throughout Alberta. PPI is looking to expand this network, he adds.
This is the latest in a number of strategic alliances to provide insurance support that PPI has formed in the past few years with IIROC and MFDA-regulated firms across Canada, but the sales force management aspect of this new deal is a unique feature, he says.

PPI’s two marketing channels – PPI Solutions in the broader market and PPI Advisory in the high net-worth market – are part of this alliance.

“I think that is really important because PPI Solutions operates in the traditional MGA mass marketplace and PPI Advisory operates in the very high end of the marketplace. One thing that we have found when we’re talking to these strategic alliances is that having both of those – the mid market and the higher end of the market – really makes a big difference in our ability to serve them,” Mr. Virtue adds.