Both of the acquisitions occurred at the end of 2020
Cross Insurance Acquires Boston Marine
On December 30, 2020, Cross Insurance welcomed Boston Marine Insurance Services, LLC to its family of insurance agencies. The agency, which primarily focuses on marine insurance including both ocean marine and inland marine, has more than 65 years of experience in the sector. With the addition of this niche agency, Cross Insurance continues to add depth and breadth to its acquisitions in the Commonwealth.
McSweeney & Ricci Joins Cross Insurance
As many of our regular readers know, last week we published our exclusive listing of Insurance Agency Mergers & Acquisitions in Massachusetts for 2020. In response to that list we received a couple of updates as to acquisitions we omitted from the list. One of those updates came from Cross Insurance. In the message they announced two agency acquisitions that were completed right at the end of 2020.
In addition to the acquisition of Boston Marine, Cross Insurance also announced to Agency Checklists that it had acquired the McSweeney & Ricci Insurance Agency. Founded in 1965, McSweeney & Ricci has grown over the past 50 years to three locations in Braintree, Cohasset, and Marshfield and more than 38 employees. For the past 20 years, the agency has been led by President & CEO, Mary Lou Ricci.
With the addition of McSweeney & Ricci, Cross Insurance is now becoming a major force within the Massachusetts insurance industry, particularly on the South Shore.
Over 150 agency acquisitions and counting
Since its founding in 1954 by Woodrow Cross, Cross Insurance is still a family-owned and operated insurance agency based in Bangor-Maine. Mr. Cross remained active in the agency until his death in 2020, at the age of 102. See Agency Checklists’ article of January 10, 2017, for a summary of Mr. Cross’s remarkable career: “Woodrow Cross, Founder of Cross Insurance, Celebrates 100th Birthday.”
The second and third generations of Cross Insurance continue to lead the agency today. In fact, all of Cross Acquisitions are still handled personally by Woodrow’s son, Royce Cross, whose approach to each acquisition is based upon his personal philosophy which he shared with Agency Checklists in our 2017 interview with him entitled, “All In The Family: An Interview With Royce Cross, President & CEO Of Cross Insurance.“
“People have a lot of choice in selling their agencies, and I think people like a family business,” explains Mr. Cross. “As the saying goes, nobody knows a family business, like another family business.” And this perhaps, has been the biggest selling point for the Cross family. Unlike a hedge-fund-backed buyer that may flip an agency a short time after buying it, Cross Insurance plays for keeps. “When we buy an agency we plan on keeping it,” says Mr. Cross.
As a result of its approximately 150 insurance acquisitions and organic growth, Cross Insurance’s $142,000,000 in P/C agency income placed it as the number seventeen agency in a listing of the top one-hundred independent property/casualty agencies in the country ranked by income in a 2020 agency survey conducted by the Insurance Journal. As of 2020, Cross Insurance is also ranked as the 5th largest Insurance Broker in Massachusetts per the Boston Business Journal’s listing.
