Ollis & Co. acquires Akers & Arney

Financially, the deal was an acquisition. Operationally, it was a merger.

The end result is the same: Last week, company officials announced Springfield-based Ollis & Co. on July 1 joined forces with Branson-based Akers & Arney to create a 100 percent employee-owned firm dubbed Ollis/Akers/Arney.

“Everything except the financial acquisition is a merger,” said CEO Richard Ollis, pointing to merged operations, management teams and insurance markets.

In the move, the terms of which were undisclosed, two veteran firms joined their deep local roots. The Ollis family founded the firm in 1885, and Akers & Arney started in 1952. Ollis/Akers/Arney’s combined staff has about 400 years of agency employee experience and nearly 200 years of agency history, officials said.

There are now 50 employees between the two offices, with founders John Akers moving into a vice president of benefits role and David Arney named chief operating officer, Ollis said.

“There’s been a tremendous number of mergers in the insurance and risk-advising industry over the past several years,” Arney said. “Agencies are banding together in many industries, not just insurance, to help offer their clients better products and to give them a stronger financial foundation.”

Merger-and-acquisition activity in the United States was up in June – the latest data available – according to FactSet Research Systems Inc. Some 1,100 deals in the month represented a 7 percent increase, compared to June 2014. The value of the mergers increased, as well, by nearly 43 percent to $244 billion in June from the same month last year.

By category, the finance/insurance and health services sectors recorded the highest-valued deals, while technology services and finance/insurance posted the largest volume.

Ollis & Co. was the sixth-largest insurance firm in the area as of November, with 29 agents and 34 local staff, according to Springfield Business Journal list research.

Akers & Arney ranked No. 9 with 14 agents and 18 employees. PJC Insurance Agency LLC topped the list with 39 agents and 44 local staff.

The acquisition follows a move in June by partners of Springfield insurance firm Employee Benefit Design LLC when two of its co-founders and nine staff members joined the team of another independent Queen City-based agency, Barker-Phillips-Jackson Inc.

In November, BPJ reported 38 agents and 41 staff members, ranking it No. 2 in the Springfield area. BPJ President and CEO Tom Montileone did not return phone and email requests for comment by press time. PJC Insurance co-owners Raylene Appleby and Lance Smith were unavailable for comment.

Stan Adamson, an associate professor of finance and general business and Baker Chair of Insurance at Missouri State University, said independent agencies often are tasked with meeting goals set by the insurance companies they sell. More agents, he said, make reaching those benchmarks more likely.

“If you or I owned an insurance agency, we might contract with The Hartford or Travelers or any number of companies that distribute their products through independent agencies. If they do a contract with us, they are going to have certain production or volume requirements in order for us to keep our contracts,” Adamson said. “That’s another reason a lot of the smaller agencies will band together – so they can have more contracts with different companies.”

Arney said the deal was not prompted by the growth of BPJ, but by a history of familiarity with Ollis & Co.

“We have been partners for many years,” he said. “We have shared best practices. We have shared employee ideas and sales platforms back into the late ’90s.”

The two firms had a formal partnership five years running through an independent company, Risk & Benefits Advisory Group LLC, which Ollis said was established to create purchasing and training economies of scale.

“Through working together, we decided we were better and stronger together than we were operating separately,” Ollis said. “We think it is a natural with the marketplaces being Springfield and Branson.

And frankly, we are a great cultural fit together.”

Arney said an appealing element was employee ownership for the Branson firm’s 20 staff members.

“They’ve got some skin in the game,” Arney said of the employee stock ownership plan that distributes stock based on employee compensation. “We wanted to be 100 percent employee owned so we could share in the growth of the company.”

Ollis said the Akers & Arney employees who have worked for the company at least one year are eligible in the ESOP.

Another key factor: the complexity of advising clients on health care insurance options in today’s marketplace.

“The health insurance market definitely played into our decision in that it allows us to have adequate support staff to help our clients navigate all the challenges of the Affordable Care Act,” Arney said.

Other members of Ollis/Akers/Arney’s new leadership team are Richard Russell, director of private clients; Jennifer Silliman, chief financial officer; Kevin Robbins, chief sales officer; and Karen Shannon, director of human resources and business consulting.

The merger, Ollis said, comes with a push to expand service offerings.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We are able to offer – and we just rolled this out because of our new affiliation – contract-review services, where we are able to review leases and customer contracts for both risk and legal ramifications. We are also able to offer human resources consultant services, and now we have a staff of three human resources consultants.”

Other elements include perpetuation and trust planning and an expansion of Ollis’ wellness division into Branson.

Ollis/Akers/Arney will maintain offices in its current locations in Springfield and Branson, the executives said, and clients can expect to continue working with their original teams.

Ollis & Co. has offered business and personal risk insurance, as well as a specialization in employee benefits. Other insurance services include dedicated claims management, and executive succession and strategic planning. Akers & Arney has sold business insurance, benefits and health insurance, home, auto and life insurance, as well as bonds. Other services include business consulting, workers’ compensation analysis, risk reduction programs and payroll.

A new website is in development – OllisAkersArney.com – and should be up and running this week, according to Marketing and Communications Director Carly Pierson.