Our firm began as a general brokerage in 2005 covering personal home and auto, commercial property and casualty, life, health and disability coverages. Taylor came out of 10 years working in banking and finance to open up a new division for a local CPA firm, adding insurance and business service offerings to the existing suite of tax, payroll and other accounting products.
During the first year he received a call from a high school friend who was running a small independent production company. He said, “Taylor, I think I’m getting [taken to the cleaners] by this insurance agency… Can you look into into it?” Taylor researched the situation, put together the market and underwriting resources needed for this type of specialty program, and was able to go back to his friend and confirm that, yes indeed, he had been [taken to the cleaners]. That policy was booked, but in the heat of starting a new agency and being pulled in many different directions, the production program was put in a drawer for a few months. Then in 2006, Taylor was invited to a local mixer for the Arizona Production Association. Arriving at the event, his friend and first production client, called out, “Hey guys, this is the INSURANCE agent I’ve been telling you about!” Taylor was overwhelmed by the number of introductions and business cards received that evening, and was left with a distinct impression of an unmet market need.
Over the next several years the firm purposefully and steadily grew this production insurance and risk management niche.
In 2012, Neil | Benton Arts & Entertainment was split off from the existing firm as a stand alone company focused exclusively on production clientele. Rachel joined as a co-founder at this time, bringing with her over 15 years of experience in finance, banking, lending, underwriting, insurance and investment solutions, and client portfolio relationship management. Coming out of middle management, Rachel was looking forward to once again servicing clients directly and having more interesting stories for what was accomplished in a day’s work than saving someone 1% on their mortgage rate or successfully hitting a sales quota… Suffice it to say, dealing with stunt underwriting for “glacier surfing“, or claims adjustment after a falcon knocks a drone out of the sky, is far more fun… Together, Taylor and Rachel wanted to help create opportunities that enabled production professionals to do the work they love, by helping handle some of the not-so-sexy administrative and insurance stuff that often gets put on the back burner. They wanted to combine their financial skill-sets and customer service experience to focus on the industries they admire and support.
Since then, the company has grown tremendously, adding new clients, carriers, associates and service offerings. While we now handle large clients with multi-million dollar annual budgets and complex risk management needs, we still maintain the importance of having a bottom-up, grow-with-the-client approach. That is why we offer free training and educational opportunities as a core service, and why we place such importance on assisting young, emerging production entrepreneurs. Whether film, television, online, event or support services, we are fans of our clients and run a business where we only succeed if our clients succeed.
It’s been a great run so far, and we hope you will consider letting us be a small, but important part of your success in the future.
