So devoted to the ideal of customer service are bankers at Synovus Financial Corp. that some will work nights and weekends. That extra touch they believe will set them apart from competitors was highlighted when a customer called the head of private banking–a program only a year and a half old–on a Sunday night. He announced he was leaving the country for a trip in the morning and would need a passport. The banker opened up the customer’s safe deposit box and produced the needed document.

"The products we deliver are all pretty much the same, but where we’re going to beat the competition is we’re going to deliver them however and wherever the customer needs it. We have better relationships because we extend ourselves," said Walter M. "Sonny" Deriso, Jr., vice chairman of the board of Columbus, Ga.-based Synovus, and the executive in charge of the company’s "New Bank" effort.

The New Bank program means moving toward modernization of the company, which translates into delivery of products and services in ways that customers want, Deriso said.

The bank is stepping up catering not just to the wealthy–with the private banking program it’s rolling out to 10 more of its subsidiary banks from the pilot site–but to the ordinary customer’s needs. It recently completed a 14-month conversion to M&I’s data warehousing capabilities and can do more sophisticated target marketing.

The $10.5-billion-asset holding company, which maintains independent boards and charters at each of its banks, is gearing up to complete another chapter in its New Bank effort. By adding insurance bank-wide, and brokerage and financial planning services for all customers, the southeastern bank company hopes to round out its offerings and achieve what is becoming the holy grail for banks: to be the place where customers get all their financial products.

The three-phased introduction of the insurance subsidiary has begun at flagship Georgia-state chartered Columbus Bank &Trust (CB&T) and two other banks in Alabama and South Carolina. The final state in Synovus’s market, Florida, has somewhat simpler insurance regulations, and will be added after the pilot periods in the other three states.

After examining a study of other banks’ methods of offering insurance prepared by KPMG Peat Marwick, which showed most are not profitable yet, and speaking with its own bank managers, Synovus management decided not to acquire an insurance agency. It will instead offer insurance to its customers through a partnership with a third party, which has been chosen but will not be announced until June, Deriso said. The carrier will provide backroom operations, a call center and licensed agents who can work as consultants or specialist to customers with sophisticated needs, Deriso said. The bank plans to get customers to the insurance agents, who must be located in a separate area of the bank, by referrals from tellers and customer service representatives, and targeted marketing.

The first phase of the three-phase roll-out includes the simplest products for novice salespeople to understand: credit life and accident insurance which most banks have offered for years, and fixed annuities, which Synovus has offered for about a year. In addition, it will offer title insurance, through a partnership with a local firm, and worksite-related supplemental insurance for commercial customers with specialist AFLAC.

The bank is also creating a reinsurance captive for mortgage insurance. In that line of business the bank will deal with several carriers, the split depending on the amount of work done by the bank or the carrier. Because reinsurance is still a fairly new line of business for banks, Deriso said special approval would be needed from regulators. He added that he had discussed the bank’s plans with regulators in all four states as well as with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and all were comfortable with the bank’s plans and indicated there should be no snags in obtaining approval.

The second phase, to begin in the fourth quarter, will offer homeowners and auto insurance. The third phase, to start late in the year 2000, will offer life, disability, long-term care and group disability insurance.

Deriso said in addition to having some employees trained to sell insurance, the plan is to have some of these specialists licensed to sell securities and be able to do financial planning for all customers. Currently, the banks can offer some customers a limited version of that service. Some of the specialists on the asset-management side of the bank can act as gatekeepers and refer some of the trust clients to the brokers. Whenever an annuity is sold, that customer has a financial profile done, a sort of minifinancial plan. But CB&T will begin piloting in May the use of what Deriso calls "superpeople," employees licensed to sell insurance and all brokerage products.

Another new program which Deriso said ties several of the bank’s financial services together, an asset management account, also requires specialist employees to sell it. In the pilot stage now and set to be rolled out in the second or third quarter, the wealthy-customer’s account has a brokerage feature and allows funds to be swept into an FDIC-insured account. The specifics of minimum account balance–probably around $10,000–and working with the data processor to clear all trades, are being worked out now.

Deriso is in the thinking stage now of the latest piece of the plan to offer customers as broad an array of financial services as possible: additional money management. He is grappling with whether to hire more money managers to complement the team that runs the company’s fixed income and equity funds, ranked by PIPER in the nation’s top ten, or to form an alliance to continue to get value from the $7 billion under management with an outside firm