Why incoming Alliant CEO is bullish on 2024

Incoming Alliant Insurance coverage Companies (Alliant) CEO Greg Zimmer (pictured) has a rosy outlook this yr for the brokerage business and his group.

Chatting with Insurance coverage Enterprise, Zimmer named a secure insurance coverage market and important development and enlargement plans for Alliant as the explanations for his optimism.

“There are at all times challenges inside a enterprise, however there are comparatively extra optimistic alternatives than destructive challenges,” Zimmer instructed Insurance coverage Enterprise. “We expect the market will stay secure this yr, and that’s good for shoppers and carriers.

“We don’t envision large outliers dramatically altering {the marketplace} that would negatively affect brokers.”

Natural development versus M&A?

Presently the eighth-largest insurance coverage brokerage within the US, Alliant can also be one of many fastest-growing brokerage companies by way of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

Beneath Zimmer’s management, Alliant accomplished over 100 acquisitions in strategic markets nationwide, rising its worker headcount to almost 11,000. It stays centered on increasing its attain throughout its core enterprise traces of property and casualty insurance coverage, worker advantages, underwriting, and private traces.

Regardless of a buoyant M&A pipeline, Zimmer mentioned conventional M&A is supposed to enrich Alliant’s natural development technique.

“We definitely purchase firms, however the place, for a lot of of our opponents, that’s their core development technique, [M&A] has by no means been the core development technique for Alliant,” he mentioned. “It’s at all times complemented natural development.

“Natural development is the place we see most of our development, together with profitable new shoppers, but additionally prime expertise within the business which may be disenfranchised with their present employer.”

Expertise acquisition and improvement: a prime precedence for Alliant

Zimmer acknowledged that rising premiums in lots of product traces final yr have been a boon for brokers’ revenue, serving to enhance Alliant’s enterprise in 2023.

Although he expects that slowing premium development will affect the market, Zimmer expressed confidence in Alliant’s development plans, particularly in its give attention to attracting and retaining expertise.

“Our aim is to have the very best individuals and to mix the very best individuals with fabulous merchandise that we develop both with our insurance coverage service companions, or by ourselves, to ship a greater consumer answer, and we are going to proceed to do this,” mentioned Zimmer.

“During the last 25 years, we’ve got constructed a corporation that helps our brokers in some ways, from the proprietary product that we develop to staffing, to allow them to appropriately serve their consumer base, offering them possession alternatives within the firm, and offering assets which might be a worth to them that they will ship to their shoppers,” mentioned Zimmer. “As we keep that setting, we are going to proceed to be the house of selection for prime expertise acquisition.”

Management transition underway at Alliant

Alliant is present process a management transition after saying a slew of modifications earlier this month, most notably that Zimmer would take over as chief government from long-time chief Tom Corbett.

On the similar time, Peter Arkley has been named president, nationwide brokerage, overseeing retail property & casualty and worker advantages, and Sean McConlogue has been tapped to guide Alliant underwriting and client options as president. The brand new management roles will take impact on April 1, 2024.

Corbett, who has led Alliant for over three many years, will retain his place as the corporate’s government chairman.

Zimmer joined Alliant in 1998 as CFO and was named president in 2007. Although he has been with the corporate, serving to steer its development, for over 25 years, he admitted that his imaginative and prescient for Alliant has remained the identical.

“It’s a quite simple marketing strategy that may be very tough to execute, which is, for those who rent the very best individuals, good issues will occur,” Zimmer mentioned. “Our focus is on hiring or buying, sustaining, and retaining the highest expertise within the business. present them the assets they should do their job for his or her shoppers and keep out of their manner.

“That has been the philosophy and can proceed to be the philosophy. We firmly consider it is a people-first enterprise.”

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