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When Arthur Lynch Williams, bane of the life-insurance industry, sold his Atlanta-based company and its army of "termites," as they called themselves, to Primerica Corp. in late 1989, many in the industry wondered if Primerica, a New York-based financial-services conglomerate, would attempt to mainstream the company and turn the thousands of A.L. Williams and Co. (AlW) true believers into "real" insurance professionals and away from the emotion, hyperbole and, some would say, invective that characterized its '80s crusade. If the messages that came out of Primerica Financial Services' (PFS) annual convention in January are any indication, the answer may be "no":
"Never before have there been so many incredibly awesome bombshells. ...If you and your partner were in Tampa, you went home absolutely electrified! This company has armed itself, and every PFS warrior is ready to fight. This battle is not over.... Never before has it bfen more important for our message of hope--our crusade--to reach the families who desperately need a way out of financial ruin.... Let's never give up the fight!"
Similar mesages emanate from the corporate suite. Even Ed Cooperman, chairman of PFS Group, espouses some of that old-time A.L. Williams religion. Cooperman, who took on the daunting challenge of building the new Primerica Financial Services in late 1991, says he turned down the job many times. But then Primerica Corp.'s Chairman, Sanford Weill, took him to a few PFS recruiting meetings--or "opportunity nights."
"I could see it in their eyes," Cooperman recalls. "It is a revolution. It got me excited. This company is back on its mission. It's the crusade again. This is grass-roots America."
The new Primerica Financial Services is a company that, three years after Williams sold it to Primerica, walks a fine line between the oft-derided "commercial cult" pathos of its past and the powerful corporate-America ethos of its future. This company still is the nation's largest issuer of term-life insurance and the second largest of all insurance companies, after the monolithic Prudential, measured by policy face amount. PFS earned more than $187 million in 1992, sold more than $46 billion in face amount of insurance and now has more than $3 billion under management in a proprietary mutual-fund family. The company recruited 10,393 new agents in...