Epic Insurance Brokers & Consultants’ Newport Beach location was the firm’s highest-performing office nationwide, boosting revenue 20% to $39.4 million last year.
The local office is ranked as the ninth-largest insurance broker on the Business Journal’s annual list.
Driving the growth was a combination of referrals and new experts joining the firm in core segments such as real estate and manufacturing, according to Bobbi Jo DeNofa-Broad, president of the southwest territory.
“We keep growing by adding additional resources and recruiting talent,” DeNofa-Broad told the Business Journal.
San Francisco-based Epic, which specializes in retail property, casualty insurance and employee benefits, has more than 3,000 employees spread over 63 offices in the U.S.
It counts 100,000 clients and has a revenue run-rate of $1 billion, according to its website.
Mitigating Runaway Verdicts, Increasing Premiums
Epic, founded in 2007, is a commercial insurance and risk management consultant firm.
The firm has a team of 10 attorneys that are focused on pre-loss and post-loss.
“They’re coverage experts that help negotiate policy terms and language prior to a loss, and then in the event of a loss, partners with our clients to help them navigate claim recovery from the insurance companies,” DeNofa-Broad said.
She said that they’re seeing the most activity within automobile liability insurance and workers’ compensation.
One of the current challenges the industry has been facing is runaway verdicts in automobile cases, which DeNofa-Broad said has had a negative impact on its customers and auto insurance pricing, particularly in California, where it’s “increasing at a rapid pace.”
Another big issue has been homeowners insurance ever since wildfires broke out in Los Angeles in the beginning of the year.
A number of the firm’s clients that live in the area with structures still standing faced non-renewal of insurance, so the firm has helped them mitigate premium increases as much as possible, DeNofa-Broad said.
Epic’s personal insurance practice in Southern California is based out of its Pasadena office, and as a result of the fires, has become one of the fastest-growing divisions within the firm, according to DeNofa-Broad.
Never a Dull Moment
There’s never a dull moment while working in insurance, “although when you meet people and tell them you work in insurance, they smile and say, ‘Oh that’s nice,’” DeNofa-Broad said.
There are daily catastrophic events that insurance firms help clients address and protect their assets, ranging from car crashes to natural disasters.
“In the event of an emergency, your insurance broker is probably going to be one of your three phone calls,” DeNofa-Broad said.
She joined Epic in 2019 as managing ra of the firm’s southwest risk management practice after spending nearly 16 years at Willis Towers Watson, one of the largest insurance brokers in the nation.
In her last three years at the firm, she served as executive vice president of Southwest corporate risk.
London-based Willis Group merged with Arlington-based Towers Watson for approximately $18 billion in 2016 and was renamed Willis Tower Watson. In 2022, it was rebranded to WTW.
At the time, DeNofa-Broad was with Willis.
“I made a difficult decision to leave because I felt that Watson came as a behemoth company that, in my opinion, wasn’t really focused on client deliverables,” she said.
Epic ended up recruiting DeNofa-Broad to consolidate all its Southern California operations.
She helped merge several offices, including an Irvine and Newport Beach office, into its current office in Newport Beach, which everyone moved into about two and a half years ago.
The process was not without problems.
“People like doing what they what they normally like to do and how they normally like to serve their clients, but I took a really open stance,” DeNofa-Broad said.
“I listened more than talked and we took the best of each of the organizations to come up with what we thought was the best path forward.”
In turn, the firm has aimed to build a flexible work environment with a hybrid model where employees are in the office three days out of the week.
These efforts have yielded a 95% employee retention rate, according to DeNofa-Broad.
In Need of Young Talent
DeNofa-Broad said that she tries to recruit every young person she meets on the street to work in insurance.
“Whether they’re a waiter or working in a bank, if they have a positive attitude and good communication skills, I try to convince people that insurance is a hidden career that can help you build a true career where you can generate personal wealth for yourself and your family,” she said.
The insurance industry is constantly looking for talent, according to DeNofa-Broad.
Epic is actively hiring amid a backdrop of a difficult job market, particularly for college graduates.
Cengage Group’s 2025 Graduate Employability Report found the current market to be the toughest entry-level job market in five years, due to a number of contributors including the current state of the economy and the increasing adoption of AI across industries, as reported by Forbes.
The percentage of graduates with a full-time job related to their education decreased from 41% in 2024 to 30% in 2025.
“Everyone in this industry is looking for young talent to train and to turn into the next powerful insurance professional, so Epic is absolutely hiring, but all of our competitors are hiring as well,” DeNofa-Broad said.
Playing for a Cause
Epic Insurance Brokers & Consultants created a new tradition two years ago.
The firm’s Atlanta office came up with the idea of a cornhole fundraising event called Brews & Boards for a Cause to be more ingrained in the community. It has since become a regular annual event for all national offices.
Earlier this month, Epic’s Newport Beach office held its third annual Brews & Boards event, raising more than $64,000 for two local nonprofits: Miracles for Kids and Project Hope Alliance.
“We invite our clients, prospects and a lot of our carrier partners to come play a friendly tournament of cornhole and raise money,” Bobbi Jo DeNofa-Broad, president of the southwest territory at Epic, told the Business Journal.
Since its inception, the event has raised $157,000 to date for Southern California organizations.
In the past, the SoCal fundraisers have donated to hunger initiatives such as the Orange County Food Bank and Feeding America.
