The Remarkable Bob MacDonald
Robert W. MacDonald has had a phenomenal 41-year career in the financial services industry. He entered the field in 1965 as a life insurance agent for New England Mutual Life in Los Angeles, and retired in 2002 as CEO of Allianz Life of North America and as its chairman in late 2003. However, in the summer of 2006, he was lured out of retirement to kick-start and serve as the chief executive of Allianz Income Management Services (AIMS), a new company formed by Allianz to respond to retirement income needs of retiring baby boomers.He resigned from the position in 2007.
In between, MacDonald, 64, built a successful sales agency for Jefferson-Pilot, served as director of marketing support for State Mutual of America, and was chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, then president and CEO of Minneapolis-based ITT Life. As president and CEO of ITT Life Insurance Corporation, he became one of the best known, most influential and controversial leaders in the life insurance industry. After seven years as chief executive of ITT Life, MacDonald struck out on his own to form a new life insurance company, LifeUSA, also in the Twin Cities.
As founder, chairman and CEO, MacDonald led LifeUSA as it became one of the fastest growing, best-known and most successful companies of the 1990s. From a start up in 1987 to the time Allianz AG of Munich, Germany acquired LifeUSA in 1999, the company developed into a profitable, publicly traded company with sales exceeding $1 billion, assets of more than $6 billion and over 80,000 agents contracted to represent the company.
In a transaction valued at $540 million, the financial giant Allianz AG acquired LifeUSA and merged it with the larger Allianz Life of North America. MacDonald was asked to continue on as CEO of the merged companies. Under his direction, Allianz Life virtually doubled in size and became a star performer in the Allianz worldwide group. MacDonald continues to serve as a director and member of the Allianz Life audit committee. In addition, he provides strategic marketing and management consulting to Allianz AG, which led to the formation of AIMS.
There is more to MacDonald's career than titles and numbers. He is acknowledged to be one of the true visionaries and product innovators in the financial services industry. He was one of the first to call for restructuring and updating the products of the life insurance industry, and for the entrance of banks into financial services. MacDonald exhibited a unique, almost contrarian management style and developed corporate cultures far from the traditional. Many in his industry were critical of his philosophy and ideas, but the results speak for themselves.
Along the way, MacDonald has authored several highly successful books on business. His latest is Beat The System: 11 Secrets to Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in a Bureaucratic World (John Wiley & Sons, New York). It follows on the heels of his best-selling management book, Cheat To Win - The Honest Way to Break All the Dishonest Rules in Business (Paradon Publishing 2005). His first work was the popular Control Your Future (National Underwriter Press), written for the life insurance industry.
In addition to AIMS, he serves on the board of Minneapolis-headquartered Buffalo Wild Wings and The Windsor Financial Group, LLC, an independent registered investment advisor.
He has been a popular speaker before over 100 organizations, written scores of articles dealing with management and the financial services industry - he is a columnist for Best's Review and Insurance Marketing, and a frequent contributor to Directors and Boards, to cite a few -- and has been interviewed on countless television and radio shows. MacDonald and his philosophy has been profiled in scores of local and national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, USAToday, Forbes, Business Week, American Banker and Institutional Investor. MacDonald was the first person to be twice recognized as "Entrepreneur of the Year" in Minnesota.
MacDonald holds a BSL degree from Western College of Law (Anaheim, CA) and the chartered life underwriter (CLU) designation from The American College (Bryn Mawr, PA).
Many swear by MacDonald's unique philosophy and management style, while others simply swear. Either way, there is no question that MacDonald has had a profound impact on the industry and literally thousands of those who have come in contact with him. Clearly, few if any can match MacDonald's career in the financial services industry.
