Hubert Humphrey (MLM)

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Hubert Humphrey (born 1942, Macon, Georgia) is the founder of several multi-level marketing financial services corporations in the United States.

Companies that he formed include Global Equity Lending (formerly World Lending Group), Global Realty Marketing (formerly World Realty Group), World Marketing Alliance, and World Leadership Group.

Hubert Humphrey was one of the original members in the A. L. Williams organization, who became well known in later years for their controversial insurance philosophy Buy Term And Invest The Difference and multi-level marketing (MLM) organization structure. It was Hubert Humphrey that brought the MLM structure to the A.L. Williams company. Hubert Humphrey, who worked for over 20 years on the railroad, was an Amway distributor before joining A.L. Williams, began to apply these techniques to his A.L. Williams sales organization initially without the knowlwedge or consent of A.L. Williams founder Art Williams. When Hubert's A.L. Williams sales office in Colorado began to create an extraordinary amount of business, A.L. Williams adopted the MLM business model.

In 1990, A.L. Williams, a private company, was sold to Primerica and was renamed to Primerica Financial Services. After the acquisition, the founder of A.L. Williams, Art Williams was no longer part of the company, leaving Hubert Humphrey as one of the top executives in the new company. Hubert was not happy with the direction of the new company and wanted to leave to pursue other interests. Since his sales organization was about 50% of the entire Primerica sales force, it was a major blow to the organization when he left.

Hubert Humphrey then created Alexander, Inc., which soon thereafter became World Marketing Alliance, Inc. The industry the new company served was still insurance and investments, however the product was different. Contrary to the ALW/PFS philospohy of Buy Term And Invest The Difference, Hubert's new company concentrated on marketing Variable Universal Life (VUL). WMA had the exact business model and structure as Primerica, except the product was different. As WMA grew and became noticed, it became just as controversial as Primerica. Hubert Humphrey sold certain assets of World Marketing Alliance to Aegon in 2001. The company commonly known as World Marketing Alliance became World Financial Group. The remaining assets of World Marketing Alliance retained by Hubert Humphrey included WMA Mortgage Services, Inc., which became the foundation for World Leadership Group and Global Equity Lending. As part of the sale with Aegon, Hubert agreed not to enter the insurance or securities industry for 5 years. That agreement has now been filled, and Hubert has now introduced Financial Leadership Advisors, which strangely uses the old logos and graphics from Hubert's old WMA company WMA Investment Advisors.

World Financial Group is also known as WFG (Aegon), formally World Marketing Alliance or WMA.

Global Preferred Holding and World Leadership Group are separate entities, and not related to WFG.

[edit] References

• Feldman, Amy. "Hubert the Great", Money Magazine, May 2000 (Vol 29 Issue 5). URL accessed on January 24, 2006.