
A brand new agent-owned “alliance” intends to unite impartial insurance coverage businesses throughout the Southeast.
Fortified is ready to launch in January, with 54 impartial businesses throughout Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee on board. Collectively, they symbolize over 225,000 shoppers and place over $2.6 billion in premium.
Joe Craven, Fortified CEO, was appointed to steer the group earlier this month. Craven has beforehand labored with Vacationers and was principally lately at Grange Insurance coverage, in keeping with a Fortified press launch.
Craven has beforehand labored carefully with impartial businesses, Fortified mentioned, and it was his “familiarity with impartial businesses and their struggles” that boosted his appointment.
“Impartial businesses are the inspiration of our business. They’re small companies that work arduous to offer the very best protection potential for his or her shoppers, however sadly being a ‘small’ enterprise could make it more durable to develop partnerships with carriers,” Craven mentioned.
Impartial brokers proceed to put the vast majority of property and casualty enterprise, Fortified mentioned, with share progress throughout virtually all strains of protection over the previous 5 years.
“Impartial businesses exist to serve their shoppers,” mentioned Lou Moran, III, proprietor of Inter-Company Insurance coverage Providers and Fortified founding accomplice.
“We construct belief by guaranteeing they’ve the protection they want. Which in flip means they arrive again once they want extra, and they’re persistently recommending us to these searching for protection.”