Discover Columbus Life Insurance Company

You want to protect your financial future and the people you love most.

But where do you start?  And who can help guide you through the overwhelming number of options?

Maybe it’s time to Discover... Columbus Life Insurance Company.

Whether you want to plan for retirement, or simply take care of loved ones if the unthinkable happens, our products are ready to help you prepare for the future.

We take a thoughtful approach when it comes to life insurance and annuities, designing competitive products that are easy to understand and that truly work for you.

Your financial professional will help you identify the right plan for your goals, and determine which of our products may be the best fit for you.

For more than 110 years, we’ve been helping people like you protect the important things you’ve worked so hard to build.

We consistently achieve top ratings for our industry-leading strength, and our long history of profitable financial performance.

In other words, we’re a company you can rely on both now... and in the future.

At Columbus Life, we work with a community of high-quality financial professionals throughout the United States.

These financial professionals are independent, which means they can offer a range of solutions to help you meet your goals.

They care about your success and focus not just on “products” - but on doing what’s right for you.

That’s what the Columbus Life Difference means to us.  We continuously strive to give you – and the financial professionals that represent us – the best in attention and support when you need us most.

Discover the Columbus Life Difference today.

Visit our website at ColumbusLife.com to learn more about us, or to find a financial professional near you!

Hi, I’m Rob Deas and today with me in the studio is the CEO of Columbus Life Insurance Company, JJ Miller. Welcome to the studio.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining me today. So year after year, you guys just deliver incredible sales numbers. How do you guys do it?

Well, it’s mainly the people. I have a great group of people that I work with, I’m really blessed that way. It’s also, we have very good products and my people understand that relationships with the distributors is what really makes it work.

I’ve heard a lot of people say about you, even personally, that if they need to get you on the phone, they can. You’re an accessible guy.

Oh, absolutely. I pick my phone up. I don’t have my phone calls screened. I give my cards to all the producers. Any of them can call me any time. 

What do you love best about the actual culture that Columbus Life creates?

Oh, I think the best part, clearly, is the people you get to know and the relationships you get to build. I absolutely love all the relationships that I’ve built over the last 9 years with producers. I have so much fun going to company conventions and being with producers. I mean, it sounds old fashioned, but it’s true. I enjoy coming to work every day and getting to interface with all the people that I am blessed to get to work with.

Now what type of agents does Columbus Life like to do business with?

We have people that are really operate on their own as a personal producing general agent. We have agents that are with an agency, maybe there’s 20, 30 agents. We have some general agents that have huge agencies, you know, scattered around the country. So there’s not really one business model. 

What we look for are agents who, again, like to deal in a upper middle and affluent marketplace, that do a great job for their clients. So that’s what we’re all about is high quality. And we like to attract agents that really like to sell universal life products. That’s where our strong suit is, is universal life including indexed universal life. We’re very good at fixed annuities and we also now have indexed annuities. So those are the type of agents that we want to attract to Columbus Life. But first and foremost is very professional, high caliber, high quality people.

Why would an agency want to do business with Columbus Life?

Well the product is number one. Beyond that, it is relationships. They want to deal with people that care about them and provide good service to them and give them good follow up and answer the phone when they call. And we have just incomparable financial strength. Our company is wonderful at that.
We have very good products, we have very good support in terms of technological support, and then we have people that understand the independent distribution system and really give them great service is what differentiates Columbus Life.

So speaking of technology, how does that fit in with what you guys do at Columbus Life?

Well mainly, technology at Columbus is to support the agents. It doesn’t replace relationships, but it helps them do their business more efficiently all the way from electronic application right through the illustration system, right to the e-policy delivery. We’re actually trying to cut that time period in half. That’s a really aggressive goal. But we think it is possible through the use of a lot of technology. 

What do you see as the future of Columbus Life?

I see Columbus Life continue to give good products, continue to give great support. The financial strength of the company is a given. Western & Southern is so strong. And so I foresee in the near future, we’ll continue to tweak things to make them better, but just continue to do things well as we have been. It’s working, so why change it, you know?

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Exactly.

There you go. What does JJ stand for?

I said I’d answer anything, so I guess I have to. It actually stands for Jimmy Joe.

Is it really?

Absolutely. That’s why it got shortened to JJ by my fraternity brothers in college. Through high school I was Jimmy Joe, starting out in college I became JJ. So and it has been ever since.

Ladies and gentlemen, JJ Miller, the CEO of Columbus Life Insurance Company. Thanks for being here today.

No, thank you.