come together

Y ou don’t have to pick up a copy of the National Enquirer to know that insurance firms are going to bed with banks these days. The megamerger of Citicorp and Travelers Insurance Group created the $700 billion giant Citigroup almost two years ago, and helped precipitate the blurring of lines in the US financial sector – a trend that was already well established in Europe. France-based insurer Axa, for example, has an asset management portfolio of $700 billion, making it the fourth-largest money manager after Union Bank of Switzerland, Fidelity and Credit Suisse. Here in Lebanon, the business of banks and insurance companies is also coming closer together, albeit on a smaller scale. “It’s the future. People are looking for a one-stop shop, and banks are creating a sort of financial supermarket,” says William Salem, head of marketing for SNA, the first insurance firm to start selling insurance in