Big Is Relative – Or Is It?

Two seemingly unrelated stories regarding size and growth in the independent agency industry came to my desk this week. I found them very interesting. The first was the cover story in The Insurance Journal about the growth and success of INSURICA a large regional insurance agency headquartered here in Oklahoma City. The CEO of INSURICA is a friend and someone I spent years serving on the Independent Insurance Agents of Oklahoma Board of Directors with Mike Ross. Mike has led INSURICA to a total premium volume in excess of $450 million dollars and #15 on The Insurance Journal’s list of the 100 Largest Privately Held Insurance Agencies in America! Not only that but they have doubled in size in the last 2 years!

This is very impressive and I’m very proud of Mike and his team!

The other story I saw was in the Independent Agent and Strategic Insurance Agents Alliance (SIAA) said that they now have 3,700 agent members and $5 billion in premium volume. The combined organization grew by $310 million dollars last year. This impressed me not only because of the size SIAA has grown to but also the fact that they have surpassed Jim Masiello’s (the CEO of SIAA) vision of one out of ten independent insurance agencies being a member of SIAA!

Very impressive!

Whether you grow your business organization by acquisition (as in the case of INSURICA) or organically (as in the case of SIAA) it takes a lot of talent, dedication, vision and hard work. Both organizations can be very proud of their results.

Speaking of results Oklahoma Agents Alliance (OAA) and its member’s have been a BIG part of SIAA’s success. While OAA member’s only represent 2% of SIAA’s total agencies it writes almost 4% of it’s total volume of insurance! Not only was impressive but OAA’s growth over the past year 8% of SIAA’s total. Not bad in one of the country’s smallest insurance market places.

By the way, OAA’s average growth per member was $342,000! That may not seem like a lot but consider that it is about 23% on average and it’s all organic growth.

If you happen to know an independent agency owner who would like to be bigger, and enjoy all the benefits a large organization like INSURICA has, but wants to remain the owner of the agency (and doesn’t have access to unlimited acquisition money), you might suggest he look at SIAA and specifically OAA. On a combined basis we are the biggest there is – but still locally owned and controlled.

Congratulations to both INSURICA and SIAA!

Posted by Tony Caldwell, Partner of OAA