Linda was the first of us to enter insurance. An English major in college, she’d been steered into computer programming at a Manhattan credit card company but enjoyed the human interaction involved with understanding business requirements more than de-bugging failed programs at all hours. A chance conversation with a nearby insurance agency owner while working for the credit card company led her to pivot into agency life.
The agency focused on employee benefits. Linda knew nothing of the business but quickly found she loved helping employers build, and their employees use their benefits packages. A quick study, her patience, expertise, and problem-solving abilities proved invaluable to her employer, team, and clients. Career-oriented by nature, Linda got licensed in Life and Health, as well as Property & Casualty and Securities.
In 1987, after ten years with the agency, Linda stepped out on her own, naming her benefits-focused firm Ladmar – an amalgam of Linda, Anthony, and Damon Marra – to neutralize possible gender bias in a male-dominated industry.
Ladmar grew steadily, added employees, and by 2018 Linda began a search for a business partner to keep the business growing and navigate the ever-changing insurance landscape. Shared values, mutual enthusiasm, and a great work ethic made Phil the perfect fit when a mutual acquaintance introduced them and a year after the introduction, a formal partnership was undertaken.
Phil had been in insurance since the mid-1990s. He started in the medical division of New York Life in the 1990s, and after the company was acquired by Aetna, he continued to work on the carrier side with United Healthcare, earning the title of Top Small Group Sales Rep in the Nation and then made the transitions to the broker side, where in 2016, he left to start his own business.
A year after formalizing the new Ladmar partnership, the COVID-19 pandemic sent our firm into remote mode. Focusing on clients suffering in the face of the downturn, particularly those in the fashion industry, helped them maintain their benefits programs and use our business. Nine months after the pandemic started, Ladmar returned to its office.
The pandemic was trying but gave us an opportunity to step back and assess the resources needed to compete and further grow the business. Our model was working but had limits and gaps. The logical next step, we decided, would be finding a partner firm with a larger presence able to offer clients a full array of other insurance coverages, such as Property and Casualty, and services.
A personal introduction led us to M&A advisor Sica Fletcher for help lining up potential suitors. Having heard from peers who had been acquired that the misery of a bad cultural fit more than offset a nice payout, we made it clear that we wanted a firm that would value our business and our people, not submerge us into an anonymous corporate structure.
Sica did an in-depth analysis of our business and clients and, in 2022 presented us with eight prospective agencies that fit our criteria. After several discussions, we whittled the list to three firms.
The offers from those top three were very similar, so in our interviews with them, we were free to focus on the other factors that really mattered. Conducting the interviews by video conference allowed us to do a lot of back-and-forth questioning and get a real feel for the personality of each firm; why they were interested in Ladmar, their goals, how they would integrate with us, how we’d fit in.
In those three finalist interviews, Risk Strategies checked all the right boxes. We found enthusiasm and commonalities around goals; an understanding of where we wanted to go with our business and how they could help us get there. The merger would be a real give-and-take and a true cross-fertilization.
Once the deal with Risk Strategies was signed, the integration process took less than a year with many new systems, processes, and sales approaches for us to grasp and digest. The partnership has been rich with new opportunities to cross-sell and join forces with associates with many different areas of expertise.
The client's reaction has been terrific, and our employees are happy. We have no regrets - only new challenges on which to thrive.
