American Express 2002 Annual Report Download - page 21

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I19 AXPI
Accenture, Halliburton, Hilton Hotels, PepsiCo,
Procter & Gamble, Seagate Technology and Unisys
Corporation. We also won the corporate travel business
of companies including Monsanto Company; Nestle
USA; Nokia, Inc.; Panasonic; and The Shell Company
of Australia Limited.
In addition, since establishing the first corporate travel
joint venture in the People’s Republic of China just one
year ago, we opened two new offices in China and
began providing corporate travel services to more than
30 multinational and local corporations there.
New and Enhanced Prepaid Products
American Express also acted to expand our business in
the growing market for prepaid payment products.
Last year’s launch of the American Express Gift Card
was the latest major addition to the company’s portfolio
of prepaid services. The Gift Card can be used at all
retailers in the United States that accept the American
Express Card. We also improved one of our original
prepaid products, the 111-year-old American Express
Travelers Cheque. In 2002, we launched enhanced
services for Travelers Cheque customers, including
passport and credit replacement assistance.
Growing Retail Financial Services
American Express Financial Advisors is one of the
premier financial planning companies in the United
States, serving clients through a field force of more than
11,600 financial advisors. While 2002 was a tough
year for AEFA in terms of financial results, we made
progress in a number of important areas to strengthen
our platform for moderate to long-term growth.
AEFA launched 34 new products across our asset man-
agement, insurance and annuity businesses — a major
increase over prior years. For example, to broaden
offerings in our mutual fund family, we launched 10
new sub-advised funds in the value, international and
small cap categories, partnering with successful fund
managers.
Among our efforts to attract more affluent clients
and to capture more assets from our best existing
clients, two notable developments were the launch of
the American Express ONE Financial Account and
the rollout of American Express Platinum Financial
Services across the United States.
The American Express ONE Financial Account is an
integrated financial management tool that combines
our clients’ investing, banking, lending and card
relationships into a single account. Since its launch,
we acquired $2.2 billion in new assets. Average assets
for ONE clients are four times higher than for other
AEFA clients.
Platinum Financial Services is a personalized, premium
financial services program targeting customers with
more than $500,000 in assets. Existing AEFA clients
who enrolled in Platinum Financial Services invested
significantly more of their assets with us, and Platinum
portfolios for new clients averaged nearly $1 million.
Another priority at AEFA has been improving the
performance of our proprietary mutual funds. We
made major changes to the leadership of our investment
group and strengthened talent across the board. Steps
taken included the hiring of several strong portfolio
managers and analysts; the restructuring of our U.S.
equity investment operation by establishing satellite
offices in New York, San Diego and Boston; the reor-