2 min read January 2023 — Mike Shea, president of independent insurance advisory firm SGP Advisors, spoke with Invest: and shared the company’s new direction and the core traits that are continuing. He discussed the company’s rebranding, changes in the market, struggles with finding talent and SGP’s focus on its niche.
SGP is in the midst of a rebranding process. What was the catalyst for this action?
This rebrand is one of the biggest milestones that we have had as an organization. We had been known as the Shea Barclay Group since 2013. When I bought the firm in 2012, it was called Thaxton Barclay Group. In 2013, we simply took out Thaxton, who was one of the partners who sold the firm. We kind of did it under the radar. We didn’t make a big splash. Now, we are embarking on a major public relations initiative showcasing the name change. Shea Barclay Group will be known as SGP Advisors, short for Shea Guercio Partners.
When you look at our former name, it kind of sounded like an old law firm. We have certainly outgrown the existing brand and evolved to be so much more. As we have brought on new partners, we felt like now is really the time to hit the refresh button and turn a new chapter for our organization. Recognizing our success and where the brand is headed, the process of changing the name has been both a daunting and incredibly rewarding task. It is certainly the biggest milestone for our organization over the past year and hopefully, it will end up as being one of the biggest milestones of our firm.
What other milestones has the firm achieved?
In addition to rebranding, I think another major highlight for us is that we expanded and opened an office in Dallas. When I started, all of our clients were predominantly in the Tampa Bay area and 100% in the Florida market. I really spearheaded a lot of our expansion outside the state of Florida. We now have clients in just about all 50 states, we have a nice West Coast presence and a big presence in the Texas market. When the opportunity came to bring somebody on and establish a satellite office, it really helped us to connect geographically between the West Coast and the East Coast by having that central spot in the middle of the country. That was our first expansion from an office standpoint outside the state of Florida.
Another big milestone was additional product expansion. Specifically, we have rolled out a product that is designed to offset the risk associated with an M&A transaction. A long-time industry contact and expert in this particular product space rolled out an innovative technology based product, the first of its kind to the marketplace, and we were one of the few selected nationally to be able to offer this product to our current clients and prospective clients.
How and where has market demand shifted?
The biggest demand in the market is to recognize and adapt the potential gaps from an insurance standpoint and from a risk standpoint as the business environment and overall exposures evolve. Cyber liability coverage is a great example. Every operating business has some sort of cyber risk exposure. That’s probably been one of the biggest true product trends and true demands that we’ve seen in the marketplace, especially with COVID. More people are moving to a remote workforce and more things are moving online and the bad actors in that space have just become more and more sophisticated. Cyber insurance is certainly a product that is in high demand. Almost every one of our clients has experienced some sort of vulnerability to cyber risk, which was not nearly as prevalent before COVID. We’re seeing a lot of companies mandating that whoever they’re doing business with maintain proper insurances in order to maintain their business or client relationship. The scrutiny seems to be unprecedented from what we are experiencing.
How do you find employees and how has the labor shortage affected you?
Whether you’re in the insurance business or the restaurant business, it’s hard to find good talent. I think COVID exacerbated this quite a bit. I understand the desire for wanting to work remotely and I’m all for that to an extent. But when you talk about culture, it’s hard to integrate somebody into the culture of any firm if they are 100% remote. There’s something to be said about collaboration and the way business is transacted within our office. We were never a remote office but we had the ability to work remotely prior to COVID should the need arise for unforeseen circumstances, so it was easy for us to pivot to that. We went probably a full year in between our entire organization getting together. The biggest thing that I felt impacted us was that lack of interaction and social component. The culture of our firm has always been very collaborative, very familial, it’s a really unique culture. We’ve done a great job over the years integrating people into that. We’ve had one person in the last four years voluntarily leave our firm. I think that’s very telling, although we’re a firm of only 25 people. We’re not a massive organization but we’re also not a mom-and-pop by any means.
Regarding the labor shortage, we’ve always had people on our “virtual bench.” Meaning we have always had people who we were in conversations with who we may not have had a need for but with whom we wanted to keep the dialogue open. If that need comes, we want to be able to have somebody we’ve established a relationship with, somebody that may be familiar with the culture in our office. That’s been a major challenge for us. It’s really hard to find good talent.
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