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The Once and Future C&F - Building an Empire
W hile the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and two world wars played out on the global stage, the Dream Team stuck to their knitting and managed C&F and the C&F group of companies as a conservative fire insurance enterprise. Even during the Great Depression, C&F did not lay off any employees — although they did reduce salaries for a while. C&F chose not to expand into new products, but they did expand geographically. Following the growth of the country, C&F established offices to the west, in Carson City, Nevada (1908), and to the south, in McKinney, Texas (1919). C&F’s Western Department was in New York City until 1912, when it was relocated all the way west — to Freeport, Illinois. By 1918, C&F had reached the actual West Coast with an office in San Francisco. The post-World War II prosperity came with many changes to society that would impact the insurance industry, including cars, planes, nuclear power, the Baby Boom and television. One of the more obscure innovations occurred in 1949 with the birth of the multiline insurance policy. Until then, insurance company regulations kept insurance companies in their respective lanes: property or casualty. The first multiline policy out of the gate was a homeowners multi-peril policy from the Insurance Company of North America. Since the big wave of new homeowners did not want to deal with five different insurance companies to get coverage, the multiline policy was a huge success. The demand for multiline coverage soon spread to commercial insurance. Also during this time, non-insurance companies were starting insurance companies to serve their customers. Using a lower cost exclusive agent system or direct in-store sales, farm bureaus and companies like Allstate (launched by retailer Sears in 1931 and named after its brand of car tires) were snapping up market share in the fast-growing automobile insurance
space. Companies like Allstate, State Farm and Nationwide had centralized operations for increased efficiency and pioneered the use of a newfangled technology: computers! Parsons could see the changes on the horizon — new risks, new categories of insurance, a new breed of competitors, new technology. The days of the mono-line insurance company were coming to an end. Not everyone with 60-plus years of experience would have embraced the need for change - but Parsons did. He knew that C&F needed to evolve to survive, and that to go in a new direction would require fresh thinking and new perspectives. But most of his key lieutenants had been around for decades. They had made C&F what it was today, but it would be difficult for them to see and implement the changes required to navigate the rapidly changing future. What to do? Parsons decided to go outside the company to usher in the next era of leadership; he even went outside the industry. But in the end, he kept it in the family — hiring his son-in-law, William Ridgway, Jr. * * *
J. Lester Parsons, relaxing.
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