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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

L/B/W Doubles Personal Lines With Fortman Purchase

L/B/W Insurance & Financial Services has doubled its personal lines insurance division through the acquisition of another insurance agency. On Jan. 1, the Valencia-based insurance agency and brokerage firm purchased Fortman Insurance Agents and Brokers, which was also located in Valencia. With the transition to L/B/W, Fortman Insurance brought all three of its employees and its 700 to 800 clients. John Fortman, the former president of the acquired company, now heads L/B/W’s personal lines division while also serving as an account executive on the commercial lines team. The new addition doubles L/B/W’s personal lines division – which had been one of the company’s smaller units – in terms of both employees and revenues, said Mitzi Like, L/B/W’s CEO. Like said Fortman Insurance was chosen because it seemed to mesh well with L//B/W. “They’re a neighboring firm that had similar trusts and integrity and had been doing business a long time, similar ways of doing business and similar marketplace,” she said. “They had the same insurance carriers that we did, so it was easy to make a transition.” She added that L/B/W’s personal lines offerings are only one area the company has focused on for growth. It has also expanded its property casualty insurance services, its employment benefits and its retirement planning. The company is also looking into other ways to expand. “We may increase our sales staff,” Like said. “We’re looking at a couple people to come aboard. … We have a good synergy, and everything seems to be moving along.” While L/B/W has made other acquisitions, it has not entered into one for about five years, Like said. She noted that the company is open to making more acquisitions in the future. L/B/W has three other divisions beside its personal lines division. Those include commercial insurance, employee benefits, and investments and financial planning. The company was formed in 1922. Combined Company No. of Lines: 4 No. of Employees: 34 No. of Customers: 2,875 Total Premium Value: $35 million (Excludes life insurance and financial planning) Fortman history The decision to join L/B/W was a matter of growth opportunity, said Fortman, who was president of Fortman Insurance for 25 years. His father started the company in 1968. Because of Fortman Insurance’s small size, the firm was having trouble attracting the appropriate sales people to bring in the needed level of company contacts. So after Like approached Fortman with the plan to acquire his company, he thought it was a good idea. “This made a lot of sense because as a small agency, we didn’t have the resources that we would need to grow at the pace we wanted to grow,” said Fortman, who was in talks with Like about the acquisition over the last several months. “With L/B/W, we’ve got many more insurance companies that we can offer to our customers. We’ve got a team of 30 people that are experts at all sorts of different aspects in insurance that an outfit with three people just doesn’t have. We’ve got some excellent sales support here that we wouldn’t be able to afford at a small agency.” Fortman expects the change will be beneficial to his clients, whom he said are still able to work with the same professionals they have been working with all along. “A lot of them are very happy because we’ve been able to offer them better coverage or less expensive coverage that we weren’t able to offer them before,” Fortman said. See related stories in Finance >

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