Bullish CopperPoint CEO eyes M&A

On the back of eight years of remarkable growth, CopperPoint Insurance Companies, a regional commercial insurer which writes workers’ compensation and commercial insurance business, remains bullish—on both potential mergers and acquisitions (M&A) opportunities and general market conditions. 

That is what Marc Schmittlein, the company’s president and chief executive officer since 2016, told APCIA Today. He said that since he took the reins, he is proud of what the business has achieved. During his time as CEO, Schmittlein has led a ground-up transformation of a legacy state fund insurer into a Mutual Holding Company structure. This structure carries the benefits of a mutual’s long-term focus but runs on the fundamentals of a public company operating structure. 

This resulted in exponential growth. Its gross written premiums reached $715 million in 2023, compared with $255 million in 2016, while its total assets were $5.2 billion last year—up from $3.6 billion in 2016.

“The team at CopperPoint is benefiting significantly from the investments we have made.”

The growth was achieved by implementing a dual-pronged strategy to support both organic and inorganic growth—it executed on both. It acquired PacificComp in 2017and Alaska National in 2019, both also workers’ comp specialists.

“We have now integrated those companies successfully and expanded products and talent enterprise-wide, fuelling organic growth in a tough rate environment,” he said. “CopperPoint remains acquisitive and sees great value in M&A, while also continuing to allocate talent and financial resources to further diversify our product and geographic footprint organically.

“The team at CopperPoint is benefiting significantly from the investments we have made in talent, infrastructure, product, data and analytics, distribution, shared services and other key functions, and we know that value will be meaningful to potential additional inorganic partners.”

Split on lines

Commenting on wider market conditions, Schmittlein noted that CopperPoint’s book now comprises approximately 80 percent workers’ compensation and 20 percent commercial P&C lines of business. He said pressure on rate in workers’ compensation over a span of a decade has caused headwinds on realising top-line growth, but he sees the opposite on commercial lines in recent years. 

“We continue to see significant capacity and excess capital in the marketplace, and while we have all benefited from higher yields in our investment portfolios, macroeconomic indicators suggest those yields will certainly come down,” he explained. 

“That said, the economic landscape in our key markets remains strong and the value proposition that CopperPoint brings to our independent agents, brokers and policyholders, from small commercial up to risk management accounts, has positioned us for strong future growth and profitability.”

Schmittlein describes CopperPoint’s relationship with APCIA as extremely strong. He said he is looking forward to learning about important issues and trends in the industry, while networking with other carriers, reinsurers, brokers and partners.

“APCIA is a great organisation and the strongest advocate for the insurance industry. I look forward to the information sessions on current events and perspectives on what is on the horizon in our industry,” Schmittlein stated.

On the company’s relationship with its reinsurers, he is “grateful for long-standing relationships with our reinsurance partners, and we always look forward to creating new partnerships”. The insurer is consistently oversubscribed on its corporate reinsurance treaties, he said. “Our reinsurance partners remain competitive as CopperPoint’s book of business performs exceptionally well.”

Prior to joining CopperPoint in 2016, Schmittlein spent 30 years in the commercial insurance industry, most recently with The Travelers Companies as president of its cyber business division and previously as co-president of business insurance. His career has also included leadership roles in commercial divisions of St. Paul Companies and Aetna. 

For more news from the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) click here.

Did you get value from this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.