BancorpSouth acquires Springfield insurance firm

The transaction was effective Dec. 31. Financial terms were not disclosed, according to the release.

The Springfield office will operate as Southwest Missouri Insurance Group, or SMI Group, a division of BancorpSouth Insurance Services. It will remain at the current location, 1650 E. Battlefield Road, Ste. 200, under the management of SMI Group President Chris Stack and associates Jim Morris and Jim Sanders. The existing staff is expected to remain, according to the release.

The agency was established in 1958 as the Jim Morris Sales Co. and recently began operating on a national and international brokerage level as an office of Arthur J. Gallagher, Risk Management Services.

BancorpSouth first entered the local market last year with its acquisition of The Signature Bank and all six of its locations.

“We already have a strong presence in the Springfield and St. Louis market areas through our existing commercial banking operations,” BancorpSouth chairman and CEO Aubrey Patterson said in the release. “This latest addition to our insurance line of business provides the opportunity to offer our clients in these market areas an even greater depth of financial services.”

Stack said in the release that a key component in the Gallagher office’s decision to join BancorpSouth was the banking company’s organizational model.

BancorpSouth Insurance Services, with BancorpSouth’s Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi insurance divisions, was ranked 38th among the 100 largest insurance brokerage firms in the United States by Business Insurance last July, according to the release.