Increased Product Portfolio Profitability

Challenge: Virtually the entire portfolio was losing money, which had been masked by superior investment returns and abetted by a previous management team rewarded based on sales volume rather than profitability.

Actions: Introduced several new products as a way of adding more persistent, higher-priced sales. Redesigned mainline products to move profitability toward the desired level, discontinued fringe products left over from old lower-end target market that were hurting persistency and profitability and encouraging sales to people below the middle-income target market.

Results: Increased overall portfolio profitability fourfold without significantly decreasing unit volume.