Erich Sternberg has announced he is stepping down at the end of March from his position as CEO of Starmount Life Insurance Co./Unum Dental and Vision.
Sternberg’s departure will mean the end of Sternberg family leadership at the company, which was founded in 1996 by his father, Hans Sternberg, and run by the family until national insurance giant Unum acquired it in 2016 for $127 million.Â
Though Hans Sternberg stepped down after the acquisition, Tennessee-based Unum maintained Starmount’s Baton Rouge offices as the hub of its dental and vision operations and named Erich Sternberg as CEO and his sister, Deborah Sternberg, as president.
Deborah Sternberg stepped down in January 2018 because Unum was restructuring her position and offered her another leadership role with the company that would have taken her out of Baton Rouge.
She has since founded the Young Entrepreneurs Academy.
Erich Sternberg has not announced his future plans but says in a statement he will be pursuing his next professional adventure.
“Erich has done a remarkable job helping stand up a strong dental and vision offering for both Unum and Colonial Life brands and distribution,” says Unum CEO Mike Simonds in a prepared statement. “We’ve made an impact, with our dental and vision business doubling in size since joining the Unum family.”
Baton Rouge will remain the “thriving hub” of Unum’s dental and vision business, the statement says, even as some local positions—corporate communications, for instance—are being shifted to the corporate offices in Tennessee.
In an October 2019 earnings call with investors, Unum leadership said it was pleased with the Starmount acquisition, though it has only tapped a small segment of the market it hopes to reach with the dental and vision products it acquired with Starmount.
“Even as we’ve had a really good success over the last three years since the acquisition, still we are about ten percent of our in-force clients that we’ve brought back dental and vision solutions,” Simonds told investors. “So we have a long ways to go in terms of what that growth trajectory looks like.”
