Fitzhugh & Co. Agency Sells to Former National Lloyds COO

One of Texas’ oldest insurance agencies, created by one of the founding fathers of the association now known as the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas, has been sold by the founder’s 83-year-old grandson, Champe Fitzhugh Jr.

Waco-based Fitzhugh & Co. was purchased May 1 by Greg Vanek, 39, former COO of National Lloyds Insurance Company, which was sold by owner Clifton Robinson to Guide One earlier this year. Vanek, a Baylor University graduate who worked for National Lloyds for 13 years, saw the sale as an opportunity to pursue his dream of owning his own agency.

He said he approached Fitzhugh, who was not looking to sell the 114-year-old company. But after talking to Vanek, Fitzhugh, who was vacationing out of state and unavailable for comment, decided it might be a good move. They agreed upon a cash payout situation, the terms of which were not disclosed.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world to have a fine young man take over,” Fitzhugh told the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Fitzhugh, along with the other two agency principals, Ralph Reynolds and Pat Ebarb, will stay on board, as will the rest of the company’s 19-member staff. Fitzhugh will serve as chairman, while Reynolds and Ebarb will serve as vice chairman and executive president, respectively. Vanek will serve as president.

While Vanek isn’t planning on making big changes at the company that has been successful for three generations, a few areas will be tweaked.

“I’d like to make it a more well-rounded agency,” Vanek said, adding that he’d like to increase life and health production. He estimated the company’s current life and health sales at about 2 percent of company business. “I’d like to see a ratio of 25 percent [life and health] and 75 percent [property/casualty].”

In order to do that, Vanek hopes to bring some new producers on board—potentially one every year for the next five years. Other than that, he plans to carry on the traditions of the well-respected company he admired enough to purchase.

Fitzhugh believes Vanek’s a man of his words. “He’s so young and enthusiastic,” Fitzhugh told the Tribune, “if he doesn’t double the size of this agency in two years, I’m going to kick his you know what.”

Fitzhugh & Co. was founded in Waco in 1886 by E.E. Fitzhugh. The young Texas A&M graduate had been scanning the state for opportunity not available in his hometown of Valley Mills. Waco was in the center of the state with six railroad lines running through it.

Fitzhugh believed the city would be bigger than Dallas, which, at the time, was of a similar size.

Fitzhugh started out in real estate and insurance, eventually founding Fitzhugh & Ficklin Insurance Agency. Ten years later, he noted with interest the formation of a national association of insurance agents. He immediately saw the advantage of agents joining forces.

In 1898, he joined ten other Waco insurance agents in sponsoring a charter meeting of the state’s agents. Forty agents from across the state attended that inaugural convention, angered by issues such as “overhead” writing, a tactic many companies were using to get around paying state taxes and agent commissions. The fledgling association, which became TAIA, and later IIAT, was successful in this early fight to protect agents’ livelihoods.

After World War II, E.E.’s son, T. Champe, joined the agency full time. He had worked helping his father at the family business since boyhood. He served as TAIA president in 1948. Champe Jr. followed in his footsteps, serving on the TAIA Board of Directors and as chairman of the Property Committee.

The company has done business at 2201 Washington Ave. since the early 1980s. Before that, the company was housed in the American Amicable Life Insurance Co., Waco’s tallest downtown building. At 21 stories, the ALICO was considered a skyscraper in 1911.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Texas Agencies