Wade Reece.

• Author: Parry, Amanda
• Position: Financial Services - Company overview

CHAIRMAN AND CEO

BB & T INSURANCE SERVICES INC. RALEIGH

Career: 30 years with BB & T. Graduated from N.C. State on a Saturday, moved to Wilson Sunday and went to work as a management trainee Monday. "I liked to eat," he explains.

It took BB & T's insurance subsidiary nearly 70 years to reach $6 million in annual sales. Seventeen years after Wade Reece took the reins, it's about to hit $1 billion. So much for oil and water not mixing--the oil being bankers, who are supposed to shun risk, and insurers, who owe their existence to it.

Reece, 51, didn't want the job initially. "BB & T was the only place I'd ever worked, and banking was all I knew," he recalls. "I said, 'I understand the long-term strategy of the bank, but I don't know a thing about insurance.' They said, 'Well, you're not opposed to learning, are you?'"

That was late 1990. The Boonville native, then in his middle 30s, was the bank's city executive in Gastonia and a regional manager when the brass tapped him to pump up the anemic insurance arm, which was founded in 1922. "We knew we needed to transform BB & T into a more dynamic, true financial-services institution, and...