Business Insight: Moreton & Company is content with steady, focused expansion

Q: Moreton & Co. is one of the Intermountain West’s largest, most diversified insurance firms. What are your plans for the future?
A: We are the dominant brokers in Utah and Idaho. During the next decade we plan prominence in Colorado and Arizona, as well. Our primary thrust is hiring first-rate individuals and secondarily looking at selected acquisitions.

Many of our competitors will buy operations and smash everyone together in the same office, which is hard on employees and clients. We’ll buy another firm only when their cultural values are similar to ours.

We’re not looking for super-salesmen who then offer poor ongoing services. That’s not our culture. The biggest disappointment in our company is to lose a client.

Q: Give a brief history of your firm, originally known as Fred A. Moreton & Co., that began operations about 90 years ago.
A: The firm began operating in 1910 as a Salt Lake City broker providing insurance services primarily to local contractors. Over the decades that followed, the firm grew in scope to include virtually all Property & Casualty and Employee Benefits consulting and brokering services.

Q: What went into the company remaining in the Moreton family for four generations when it’s rare for family-owned businesses to survive two generations?
A: Our business relies on expertise, so the trick is to keep that expertise and therefore keep clients satisfied. Employee tenures are 15 to 25 years, and we want clients to stay with us forever. It’s unusual in this day and age to have people stay with a firm so long.

We’d like to feel it’s because we’re loyal and generous to our employees. We’re more interested in this kind of consistency than in getting big for big’s sake.

We are a family firm more interested in having a good reputation with the community, our employees and our clients, rather than have to worry about returns to shareholders. Private firms have the luxury of fostering values that endure.

Q: You opened offices in Phoenix this year, Denver last year and Boise in 1993. Explain the groundwork for that expansion.
A: The first thing is to find areas where we want to grow. Denver and Phoenix were easy to spot. Then we had to find good leaders for the offices. We hired senior people from large, established brokers and we found technical people with 20 years in the business who are known in the community for fostering good, reliable client relationships.

Our next step has been to get insurance companies in these new offices to appoint us to represent them. With these steps behind us, we’re off to our core business, matching [company] to a seller [an insurance underwriter]. We negotiate the best deal.

© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. September 17, 2006.

Moreton Advantage

  • » Superior Service:
    Moreton & Company's client retention rate of 96% is a direct result of focusing on superior client service.
  • » Negotiating Strength:
    Placing over $450 million in annual premium, Moreton maintains significant market relationships with the world's leading insurers.
  • » History & Growth:
    Though we now have over 180 employees throughout four offices, we remain as committed to client service as ever.
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