Talk:Arthur L. Williams Jr./Archives/2015

Why Art Williams was forced out of Primerica Financial Services

Art Williams was forced out because of litigation involved an ex-PFS National Sales Director, Randy Stelk. Basically what happened is that R.S. broke away and formed "Amerishare" around the same time Sandy Weill was reshaping PFS from above. Art Williams went on a vendetta against R.S. via intra-company sales force communcations and it escalated into lawsuits between Amerishare and PFS [1] [2]. Here is some information about Mr. Stelk [3](Amerishare ultimately failed and his insurance carrier sued him). Anyone wanting to look further into this should. Suffice it to say, in the fog of history, details can be lost, but what it boiled down to was basically that Mr. Williams used to have a close-knit team of National Sales Directors of which, he saw himself as the "coach" [4]. When Mr. Stelk bailed, it created bad blood and the resulting acrimony and litigation gave Sandy Weill the leverage he needed to squeeze out Mr. Williams. FYI: It was the massive amounts of free-cash-flow being spun off by MILICO (Massachusetts Indemnity & Life - ALW's insurance carrier, later called Primerica Life Insurance) which enabled Sandy Weill to leverage up Commercial Credit Corp. into the growth vehicle it became. There's a lot more to this story in that it could be reasonably argued that the game-changing disruption which ALW caused to the installed policy base of the the old-line "mutual" life insurance companies (Met, Pru, John Hancock, etc.) was the single biggest tipping factor in radicalizing the investment/growth plans of those companies. Upsetting the old "dividend" paying cash-value policy books of those big old companies seriously shocked a substantial part of USA financial system and did indeed contribute to the CFOs of those companies choosing a much more risky path to cope, than they otherwise would have had to choose. The industry-wide churn rate of in-force life insurance policies skyrocketed as ALW grew and "replacement" became more commonplace. The distruptive phenomenom that was ALW is a very interesting case study. You sell yourself short if you shrug it off as a "pyramid scheme". 216.153.214.89 (talk) 01:52, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I was an RVP with ALW/PFS and I left during the litigation period relating to the Randy Stelk debacle. Basically what happened was that RS and a number of other NSDs were pushing this: Sell a large policy to a pastor, with the church funding it, then gift back a large measure of the commission to the church. This idea had been touted around the company and when RS's hierarchy sales jumped due to running with this idea, RS was even honored by Art himself on the ALW private satellite TV show (I saw the broadcast). However, it was alleged that RS's hierarchy took this idea too far, with out-sized policies which were lapsing too much after the 1st year. RS got the boot and spun off Amerishare ("AMS") which sold ITT/Hartford level term via a copycat model of ALW. During the early phase of AMS, many FL and GA reps were defecting from ALW/PFS to AMS. So for a few weeks, Art would sometimes compare the pay plans on ALW TV, etc., but that backfired by letting others know of the AMS opportunity - and a lot of RVPs defected. Soon, Art was embroiled in litigation which alleged that ALW/PFS reps had joined AMS under a sneaky plan to write bad business ("double-agents", "spies"). This became a legal controversy in front of the FL insurance regulators and Sandy Weill used that as an excuse to force Art out of daily management. Soon after, there was a class action lawsuit and many RVPs, including myself, bailed during this time - and were released from their ALW/PFS contractual obligations due to the lawsuit settlement. However, only those who went to AMS were covered, so that's where my upline NSD (and I) went. We stayed for about 2 years but eventually my NSD put other things in place and we bailed from AMS. RS did prove to be disreputable, so I was glad we had bailed from AMS before his legal issues came to a head. But I can tell you this: The thing which had made ALW great was the "I promise" brochure, where Art himself had promised to pay multi-generational renewals on your downlines. But, when Sandy Weill muscled in, those renewals - and the real security, were taken away (SW used that cash flow for corporate acquisitions instead). So, even though I could have received renewals from ALW/PFS, I was not able to. On the other hand, for the book of business I moved to ITT/Hartford; I got renewals for over 10 years. So the AMS defectors (myself included) did better by bailing from ALW/PFS because: They re-wrote the Milico/PFS term policies for less, saving customers money, they got paid another commission for doing so and got renewal commissions afterwards. But even with all that, had our 1st upline SNSD (Senior National Sales Director) not been such a weasel and had Art not been forced out, I doubt my NSD (or me) would have left. Simply put, without Art being there to keep the various SNSD's in-check, the risk/reward calculation favored leaving. All told, I was in ALW/PFS from 1984 to 1992 and with my NSD after that, until 2007. I left insurance in 2010. 98.118.62.140 (talk) 16:29, 17 November 2015 (UTC)