2025 Economic Impact Awards 75+ Years in Business: Ollis/Akers/Arney

Ollis/Akers/Arney is celebrating 140 years in business. Founded in 1885, the firm has grown into a multidiscipline, Employee Stock Ownership Plan firm offering insurance, business consulting and benefits development services.

“We’re really proud of the fact that we were founded right here in Springfield, Missouri,” says Richard Ollis, CEO. “We continue to serve southwest Missouri in about a four-state region around us and that’s really important to us.”

Ollis & Co. acquired Akers & Arney in 2015 and the Paul Long Agency in 2018. The firm added risk management and business advising to its offerings in 2008, transitioning from a transactional to consultative model of business. The firm began its ESOP model in 1985, becoming 100% employee owned by 2008. This was a watershed moment, Ollis says, creating multigenerational economic impact.

“When you’re an employee at an employee-owned company, you not only earn a paycheck but you also earn equity that is going to be a lifelong game-changer in many cases for your family,” Ollis says. “You retire and earn all this equity, it turns into wealth and that wealth then can be spent by you and other family members: Sending kids to college, buying homes, buying other businesses. It can be so transformational. … I really think that the widespread equity ownership that the ESOP allows us to do can really help us drive the economy.”

Ollis/Akers/Arney joined the Beyond Insurance Global Network in 2020, was named an Insurance Business America Top Insurance Employer every year between 2019 and 2024 and was given the 2020 Torch Award for Ethics from the Better Business Bureau. It supports more than 35 charities with numerous team members having served on local boards, Springfield City Council and in other civic capacities. Team members are given eight hours of time off annually for volunteer work.

“The community is where we live, work and obviously earn a living,” Ollis says, “and it’s a responsibility to give back to that community.”

Sustaining a business for 140 years is all about consistency, Ollis says, and that contributes to sustainable growth not just for a company, but for the area in which it operates.

“After 140 years in business, it’s really about grinding it out every single day and doing your very best and sometimes the economy or various things get in your way, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s really that perseverance, right?” he says. “You can have a sustainable economic impact over a long period of time, not just some kind of flash in the pan.”