Tony McIntosh sells insurance, just like his brother, father, grandfather, and uncles.
“I was born into insurance,” McIntosh told the Business Journal.
“If I fell over and got cut up, an insurance policy would come out.”
The 41-year old, who grew up in Orange County, has shown he knows the industry. He started the insurance unit at First Foundation Inc. (Nasdaq: FFWM) in 2015, then spun it off into his own firm, Mission West, in 2018.
This month he engineered its sale to C3 Risk & Insurance Services, a privately held brokerage in San Diego.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed for McIntosh’s 10-person Mission West. C3 has 100 employees with revenue north of $10 million, he said.
“We think we have created the best insurance brokerage model,” C3 President Gabe Erle said in a statement. “This acquisition proves we are able to share our model throughout California [and] attract top talent” statewide.
On Mission
McIntosh’s grandfather, E. Richard DeRosa, in the 1960s was chairman and CEO of Mission Insurance Group, one of the biggest in California at that time.
He “was a huge inspiration to me,” McIntosh said. “He was an icon in the workers compensation industry.”
McIntosh has worked for more than a decade in the insurance industry, including being a top retail broker for three years at the Aliso Viejo office of Barney & Barney, now part of Marsh & McLennan.
In 2015, he joined First Foundation where he began its property and casualty division. The bank said the insurance unit generated $1.2 million in 2016, up from $700,000 in 2015 when it began.
First Foundation decided to divest that unit, saying additional investments in the insurance unit “would not provide adequate returns,” according to its 2017 annual report.
FFWM Exit
First Foundation decided to get out of insurance for several reasons, he said, including a trend for banks toward that, such as when Wells Fargo did it in 2017.
After First Foundation divested the unit, McIntosh took its clients and started Mission West with his own funds and those of other executives, spurning private equity.
“We were profitable our first year out,” he said.
Mission West’s website said its independence lets it represent many insurance companies with a variety of options on coverage and price.
“With our connections and knowledge of the market, we can often find a better value for your insurance dollar than you might find searching on your own,” the website said.
Fast Mover
C3’s acquisition gives it quick entry into Orange County’s insurance industry, McIntosh said.
Asked why he’d work for a larger corporation again, McIntosh said he’s now one of four partners at the firm and that the size will help him manage the business better.
“I’m not giving up independence,” he said, but “I’m wearing fewer hats.”
He’s looking to hire brokers also interested in becoming partners. They’d have a tougher time doing so at larger firms that are publicly traded or held by private equity, a recent trend in the industry, he said.
In light of that, prospective brokers are “attracted to a privately held company. There’s opportunity [there].”
C3 wants “to restore the locally dominant, privately held insurance broker.”
His office lease ends next year and he want to get “much larger.”
“We’re looking to expand in Orange County and grow by leaps and bounds.”
Even though he knows a lot of insurance experts in his family, he hasn’t hired them.
“Not yet!” he quipped.
