Barker Phillips Jackson restructures top management

Power is shifting into new channels at Barker Phillips Jackson Insurance.

Effective Jan. 1, company President Dick Jackson became chairman of the board and CEO, while Thomas Montileone has joined BPJ as president and chief operating officer.

Jackson has headed BPJ, formed by the 1986 merger of Barker Phillips Insurance and Consolidated Jackson, for the past 16 years.

Montileone comes to BPJ after 13 years with Blue Cross Blue Shield, where he served as regional sales manager.

One of the largest privately held independent insurance brokerages in the state, BPJ is 100 percent employee owned.

Goals

The aim of restructuring top management at BPJ is to spread out the leadership responsibilities and ensure the perpetuation of the business, Jackson said. He has been carrying the responsibilities of president, CEO and chief operating officer since the retirement of COO Peggy Dye a year ago. Jackson did not replace Dye because he was already planning the restructuring.

Meanwhile, the company has been without a chairman of the board since the death of Milt Phillips more than two years ago.

The restructuring is "to spread those responsibilities out, get some new blood into the organization (and) let me concentrate on some strategic planning and handle my board of directors," Jackson said. "Tom can concentrate on the operations of the company, marketing insurance and counting the beans."

It will be a welcome change for Jackson.

"I'm trading in about a 70-hour workweek for hopefully something that's closer to 30 or 40," he said.

Also, for small businesses like BPJ, "perpetuation is the number one stumbling block," Jackson said.

The hiring of Montileone lowers the management age Jackson is 55 to Montileone's 45 and gives Jackson the chance to pass on his knowledge, to "teach him the (property and casualty) side of the business, teach him what it's like to have to manage a brokerage firm and kind of show him where the traps are at BPJ," Jackson said.

"It's a perpetuation deal; it's a deal that allows us to expand and gives me a chance to take advantage of my knowledge of the business and (share) the vision."

But that's not to say Jackson will be out of the picture. Eventually, he might become board chairman exclusively and pass the CEO mantle to Montileone, but that's down the road. Meanwhile, he continues to work with clients, as do all managers at BPJ.

"We don't have any full-time managers at BPJ; Tom will also have some sale responsibility of his own, just like I did," Jackson said. "The reason we do that, I learned from an old buddy of mine in the Army if you get to managing full time, you forget what it's like to be in the trenches and you don't experience the pain that everyone else is experiencing."

Montileone has a strong background in marketing and sales of life, group and health coverage. His selection is the result of a six-month-long hiring process that included a national search and a field of hundreds of applicants.

Montileone said he plans to build on the agency's success in the past year, BPJ revenues jumped about 25 percent to 30 percent.

"My main goal is to just stay the course, continue to do the things we've been doing right, and then just work with Dick in looking for ways to grow the company, be as profitable as possible and do as good a job as possible for our clients," he said.