Featured New York Life Insurance Agent: Frank Jordan

Frank Jordan, of the Greater San Francisco General Office, cares about the big stuff: like war, peace, life, and death. So, when he’s not financially guiding his customers from the Bay Area, he is leading trips to world war battlefields across Europe.

"When I see men who’ve fought in the great wars cry at the gravesites of their comrades, I know I’m witnessing something that is real. And it’s just as moving as the moments I’ve experienced as an agent, delivering a check to a beneficiary who has just lost a loved one. These are the moments in life that really matter. And they’re the moments when you know that what you are doing for a living makes a difference.”

Jordan wasn’t always destined to be a World War I and World War II buff or a life insurance agent. In fact, he was a star placekicker for the University of Southern California, kicking a last-second 37-yard field goal against Notre Dame and winning the 1978 National Championship. But when the Rams and the Raiders passed on him after he graduated from college, Jordan started to look around for something entrepreneurial, that wouldn’t keep him locked in an office all day.

A neighbor of his family worked for New York Life, Jordan says. “He set up an interview with the managing partner of the San Francisco G.O.” Jordan also interviewed with several other life insurance companies, but ultimately was sold by “the incredible professionalism of everybody I met at New York Life.”

Just a few years out of college and with very little professional experience, Jordan had to hustle to make things happen during his first few months on the job. “I knew it was a sink-or-swim situation and I was determined to swim,” he says. “I pulled out my high school yearbook and called everyone in it.”

Most of Jordan’s classmates had followed his football career at USC and were more than happy to take a call from him. “At first, I sold mainly basic life insurance to my married classmates,” he says. “But I kept in touch with the others, knowing they would need insurance when they got married.”

Most of Jordan’s initial clients are still with him. “A fair number are small business owners,” he says. Jordan’s current clientele includes owners of construction and small high-tech companies, auto dealers, and printers. “I help them find solutions to the financial challenges they have running their small businesses,” he explains.

Not surprisingly, Jordan uses a football analogy to describe his role. “I help quarterback my clients through the process, working with attorneys and certified public accountants,” he says. “My goal is to make what can be a complicated and emotionally charged situation as stress-free as possible.”

Working out of the G.O.’s downtown office with sweeping views of the city and San Francisco Bay, Jordan also sells a wide range of life and financial products to his more than 1,500 individual clients. “When I first started in the business, we (New York Life) only had a few products,” he says. “Today, our (New York Life subsidiairies') variable products¹ and mutual funds ¹ enable us to compete with the banks and brokerage houses,” he adds.

Jordan’s first life claim came in his third year. “It was for someone I went to grammar school with,” he says. “This friend was a supervisor in one of the city’s cable car barns and engaged to be married.” Jordan’s customer went sailing on San Francisco Bay one evening and didn’t return. “Handing the check over to my friend’s fiancée made me realize how important our work is,” he says.

Jordan is married and lives in the East Bay with his wife, Barbara, and their two boys, Alexander, 12, and Clark, 9. "One thing I really like about this career is that it allows me to take time to coach my boys in basketball, baseball and soccer," he says.

Jordan’s passion for military history began on a trip to Normandy with his family when he was ten years old. "My dad was a paratrooper who jumped into Normandy on D-Day with the British Sixth Airborne Division," he explains.

In 1991, Jordan began leading group tours of WWI and WWII battlefields for up to as many as two-dozen people at a time. Some participants have been veterans— one 90-year-old Canadian veteran of WWI took part in his first tour. Some of the tour members have been children or grandchildren of veterans. Others have simply been military history buffs.

Jordan — who has read hundreds of books on WWI and WWII history — has conducted more than a dozen tours. His tours were the subject of a Los Angeles Times article in November 2006. Along the way he has amassed a small cache of military artifacts, some of which are on display in his office.

Jordan, who celebrates his 28th anniversary as a New York Life agent this year, hopes to hit the forty-year mark someday. “There are few things in life that give me the deep satisfaction that I get from this career,” he says. “There are few things I’ve found to be as meaningful,” he adds.

Questions about this article or about New York Life, our subsidiaries and the products we offer? Please call this toll-free number, 800-710--7945, to arrange for a discussion with a New York Life agent or a NYLIFE Securities LLC financial services professional.

¹ Securities offered through NYLIFE Securities LLC (Member FINRA/SIPC)

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