Louisiana’s Bankers Insurance Center Begins Agency Acquisition Plan

Bankers Insurance Center LLC, a Louisiana-based insurance consortium established in 2004 and owned by 48 community banks located throughout the state, has begun a program of acquiring insurance agencies in Louisiana. Its first acquisition, effective Jan. 1, 2005, was Monroe-based Troy & Montgomery Insurance, one of the largest independent insurance agencies in north Louisiana.

Troy & Montgomery, which has a 100-year-old history in north Louisiana, will serve as the primary basis of operation for the newly formed LLC. The agency writes over $20 million in insurance premiums, according to information on its Web site, www.troymontgomery.com. Eugene Montgomery, currently president of Troy & Mont-gomery, was named president and CEO of Bankers Insurance.

“I have always believed that success is certain when capable people share a common vision,” Montgomery said. “This transaction will enable us to combine our resources to benefit our customers, employees, insurance companies, member banks and agency. Having the Bankers Insurance Center headquarters based in Monroe is a definite advantage. We shall continue to embrace technology allowing us to expand our operations statewide without interruption.”

In announcing Mont-gomery’s appointment, Albert C. Christman, chairman of Bankers Insurance Center and president/CEO of Guaranty Bank & Trust of Delhi, La., said, “We are very pleased to have someone of Mr. Montgomery’s experience involved in the leadership of the Bankers Insurance Center. We are confident that he and the other managers of Troy & Montgomery Insurance will be able to implement the marketing and product distribution strategies that we envisioned when we formed the Bankers Insurance Center.”

Christman stated he expects Jeffrey Mouk, Bruce Bullock and Kathy Smith, all currently involved in the management of Troy & Montgomery Insurance, to play prominent roles in the management of the Bankers Insurance Center.

The center plans to acquire additional insurance agency operations all over Louisiana. “We have banks in every area of the state,” Christman said, some of which are already in the insurance business. He added that the areas where community banks operate will be targeted for acquisitions. Although the group is looking at both large and small agencies, right now it is concentrating on larger, well-established agencies with bigger books of business. “We want to aggregate the volume of business quickly,” Christman said.

The intention is to aggregate enough premium volume in order to become a significant player in the property and casualty insurance industry in Louisiana. Both commercial and personal lines of insurance will be marketed.

Christman emphasized that the organization is not a cluster. The bank-owned agencies will sell insurance for the bank as employees. “We have to address the needs of the banks that are in the business, as well as those that hope to get in the business with the best possible chance to succeed. And we think the best possible chance to succeed is through this type of consortium arrangement.”

He noted that while the idea behind Bankers Insurance is to attract the interest of carriers by leveraging the bank-owned agencies’ combined accounts, so far the organization hasn’t approached any insurance companies. However, Christman said, “several of them have come to us. I think in part because they’ve seen the success that community banks had in Virginia [which previously set up a similar venture]. And they had a difficult time starting out.

“Obviously this is not something easy to do, if it were easy to do everybody would have done it a long time ago. They [the carriers] know the potential that’s out there. And … some of the major carriers have already been in and talked us to about their desire to be a part of this.”