Fortis Baas American Bankers For $2.6 Billion.

National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, March, 1999 by SCLAFANE, SUSANNE

With $2.6 billion in cash, Fortis bought more than a complementary credit insurance operation in a recently announced deal to acquire American Bankers Insurance Group, Inc., according to one of its executives. During a conference call, Allen Freedman, chief executive officer of Fortis, Inc., a U.S.

holding company for the Brussels and Netherlands-based banking, investment and insurance services group, suggested that what looks like a match of two organizations with specialties in credit insurance is also a deal about distribution. "Anybody can write a credit life product," Mr. Freedman said, stressing that the "product is a small part" of the reason for the acquisition. "We are beneficiaries of the convergence of financial services" in the United States,...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.