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Skip to main content. Opens in a new tab External site. Because Combined focused on the low end of the insurance market, the company did not suffer from problems that faced other insurers during the late s. While those companies struggled with skyrocketing health costs and accident settlements, Combined prospered.
By the end of the s, Combined Insurance Company was looking for acquisitions. In the company formed the publicly owned Combined International Corporation to act as a holding company, in order to avoid state-by-state regulation.
The holding company was monitored by the Securities and Exchange Commission and was not subject to scrutiny by each state's insurance commission. Union Fidelity was an accident and health insurer, which excelled at direct-response marketing and sold 75 percent of its policies through direct-mail and newspaper campaigns. The unit was expected to give Combined's door-to-door marketers a needed boost.
Combined suffered from the rising costs of recruiting and maintaining a large battalion of field representatives, and the company's domestic sales had been flat for the two years prior to the acquisition. His father once again resumed control of the company. At age 79, W. Clement Stone was once again caretaker of the company he had founded. At the same time, the company was troubled by stagnation in domestic premiums.
Although the slump in growth was offset in the short term by excellent investment results, a plan to deal with rapidly changing markets was needed.
Combined solved its leadership problems with the acquisition of the Ryan Insurance Company in August Founder Patrick G. Ryan then became president and CEO of Combined. Stone remained chairman. Clement Stone had called an unexpected adjournment that lasted for five hours at the special shareholders meeting that had been called for the purpose of approving the acquisition, Stone finally approved the deal, and Combined at last had a new leader.
Pat Ryan's management style differed considerably from W. Clement Stone's. Ryan, while himself a good motivator, was generally described as less flamboyant and more diplomatic.
The new CEO of Combined demonstrated his approach by announcing a major acquisition just two months after taking charge of the company's operations.
Rollins Burdick, which was well known for its large corporate clients, absorbed Combined's other brokerage operations, making it the eighth largest insurance broker in the United States. The acquisition provided Combined with a source of fee income that was not readily susceptible to decline because of the less competitive nature of corporate insurance.
In , although revenue rose 27 percent, net earnings dropped 19 percent. Ryan began to cut costs and integrate Combined's greatly diversified operations. In revenues grew 18 percent and operating earnings jumped 47 percent. The Ryan Insurance subsidiary stretched its extended warranty insurance to appliances, and Union Fidelity took advantage of the growing need for supplemental health insurance. The acquisition further widened Combined's product line, notably adding an array of interest-sensitive universal life products for upscale markets.
In March Combined International Corporation's shareholders voted to change the name of the company to Aon Corporation. Patrick Ryan said the name change was necessary to eliminate confusion between the holding company and its subsidiary, Combined Insurance Company of America.
In January Aon restructured its subsidiary Rollins Burdick Hunter Company, setting up a holding company to oversee four units: Rollins Burdick Hunter Company, the brokerage; Rollins Specialty Group, a newly created unit concentrating on brokerage services for financial institutions, associations, and affinity groups; Miller, Mason and Dickenson, the newly acquired employee benefits consultant; and Aon Risk Services, a reinsurance brokerage operating through Aon Reinsurance Agency, formerly Reinsurance Agency.
In Stone left the board of directors and the company he had founded. Ryan continued his growth-through-acquisitions strategy through the early s, maintaining the company's focus on life and health insurance, life underwriting and specialty insurance, and insurance brokerage.
Ryan, however, felt the company needed to shift its focus, eliminating its slow-growing life insurance and annuities business and beefing up its brokerage and specialty insurance businesses. Corrects final paragraph to clarify that Aon was the proposed seller, not Willis Towers Watson.
Department of Justice. A federal judge has narrowed the scope of a U. Gallagher in return for the EU green light. Senior Judge Reggie Walton, who joined the U. The U. Department of Justice approval for its merger with Willis Towers Watson.
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