See the future

An important ingredient was missing when CBIZ Inc. insurance executives held two marathon dinner meetings earlier this year with longtime Sarasota insurance executive Keith Mercier and his two top colleagues. No one talked about insurance.

The CBIZ officials, including Mike Callaway, president of the insurance unit, were wooing Mercier, his brother Matthew Mercier and their business partner, Patrick Wright, to leave Clearwater-based Bouchard Insurance. The Mercier-led team had built the Sarasota office of Bouchard into a $6 million book of business over a decade, essentially going from worst to first among Bouchard satellite offices. The core of the business was commercial insurance for a variety of industries, from construction to hospitality.

One dinner, at Capital Grille at the Mall at University Town Center in north Sarasota, lasted five hours. Another dinner, at Crab & Fin on St. Armands Circle, was nearly as long. “All we talked about was philosophy and culture and families,” says Keith Mercier. “We didn't talk about insurance.”

That was the appetizer to what's been a much bigger change of course. The Sarasota Bouchard group left the company during the summer for CBIZ, a publicly traded Ohio-based financial services firm that has divisions in everything from property and casualty insurance to employee benefits consulting and accounting. The company had $750.4 million in revenue in 2015.

The Mercier brothers and Wright opened the Sarasota-Bradenton office for CBIZ. Mercier, 43 is the president; Wright, 49, is executive vice president; and the younger Mercier, 35, heads up community and condo associations insurance and risk management.

CBIZ has other Florida offices in Clearwater, Tampa, Orlando, Delray Beach and Boca Raton. “The addition of our new business partners deepens our bench of professional expertise and brings great experience and talent to CBIZ Florida and the entire Southeast,” Callaway says in a statement.

Bouchard was a tough place to leave, the new area CBIZ executives acknowledge. It's won multiple area awards as a best place to work, and with 223 employees and $36.7 million in sales in 2015, it's one of the largest independently run insurance firms nationwide.

But if they ever were to leave, says Matt Mercier, it would be a company like CBIZ. With its variety of in-house services and family-first corporate culture, it was the just right fit, adds Wright. “We just felt at home,” Wright says. “We vetted this out for months. We weren't just going to pick up and leave.”

The core challenge the new CBIZ leaders face now is they are running something akin to a startup in a competitive industry, where stability is a significant factor in customer stickiness. And state and federal regulations, in flux and complicated, make the business harder.

The Merciers, sons of former two-term Sarasota County Commissioner Paul Mercier, and Wright were worried about it enough that they held a meeting with their wives to address one issue: Can we rebuild an insurance agency like we did with Bouchard?

The answer, says Keith Mercier, kept coming back to yes, they could do it.

The team, for one, isn't starting with nothing. About one-third of their clients, around $2 million in business, followed them from Bouchard to CBIZ. Notable among the Bouchard-to-CBIZ clients are 22 community associations, clients that wanted to stick with Matt Mercier, who has established a reputation as a statewide leader in that niche market.

But the tipping point, says Keith Mercier, is the ability to sell more than insurance with CBIZ. “We've never had anything like this before,” he says. “We always try to align ourselves as a trusted adviser. We want to be on the same level as the accountant or the lawyer.”

At a glance
CBIZ Inc.
Headquarters: Independence, Ohio
Year founded: 1996
CEO: Jerome Grisko
2015 revenues: $750.4 million
Business lines: Financial services and employee business services
Locations: More than 100 offices nationwide, mostly in Northeast
and Midwest. Florida offices are in Clearwater, Tampa, Sarasota, Orlando, Delray Beach and Boca Raton.

— Mark Gordon