Insurance Is a Good Business If It’s Private
The insurance world has a rhythm: mergers, consolidations, private equity roll-ups, and public markets that demand quarterly gains. The push for modernization began decades ago with figures like Peter Lewis, the longtime chairman of Progressive , who framed the company as not just an insurer but a technology business. “We are a technology company that happens to sell insurance,” Lewis used to say. Progressive CEO Pat Griffith echoed the line on the company’s May 7, 2024 earnings call. Insurtech founders later recycled it without looking deeper, yet it became the story everyone wanted to hear.
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In the 1980s, Lockton was still a brokerage focused on the construction industry, generating $2 million in sales. Jack Lockton, who had joined his father’s business in 1966, knew the firm needed to diversify, so he turned to the broader corporate market in Kansas City. “I’m an excellent salesman, but I’m not a very good manager or administrator,” Jack said in a 1989 interview with The Kansas City Times. To expand, he needed professionals. “I went after the top sales and technical people in the area.” By that year, Lockton had reported over $20 million in revenue and grown to 190 employees. “We brought on people who were immediate revenue generators, so there wasn’t a major cash flow gap. This isn’t a business that requires a lot of capital,” said Mike Frost, then managing vice president and COO.
Jack – “If he was awake, he was working“- was equally clear about the company’s future: “It will not be sold, nor will it go public.” In the 1990s, Lockton acquired Controlled Care Inc., a Kansas firm that helped businesses manage workers’ compensation costs. At the same time, the company expanded into self-insurance plans, tapping into the alternative market as traditional carriers failed to meet many clients’ needs. Lockton Risk Services generated $100,000 in fees in 1988, its first full year, and by 1992 had grown to about $5 million.
Today, under the leadership of Ron Lockton, who returned as CEO in 2024, the firm is one of the world’s largest privately held insurance brokers. For the fiscal year ending April 30, 2025, it reported $4 billion in global revenue, reflecting a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 16%. In the first half of 2025, the firm announced plans for a reinsurance office in Paris, hired senior brokers in London, leased a new campus in Plano, Texas, acquired AXIS’s corporate superannuation portfolio, and appointed leaders across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. It also reported a data breach in March, released climate and ransomware guides in Australia by the summer, and continued adding executives at a pace that signals momentum rather than retrenchment.
Technology has a place at Lockton – but mostly behind the scenes. Scout, the firm’s analytics platform, now integrates with Axio to give cyber brokers sharper views of risk. CyberCube and Insurity’s SpatialKey have been cited in past press releases for catastrophe and cyber modeling, while UK-based Artificial Labs provides contract-building and underwriting tools.
On the consumer-facing side, technology has been more experiment than success. Mylo , short for “My Lockton,” was launched in 2015, when Ted Devine was still running Insureon, a small-commercial insurance platform. Like Insureon, Mylo chased the promise of direct and digital distribution, but with its own spin. Lockton also invested in Bold Penguin’s Series B in 2019, backing a commercial insurance marketplace later acquired by American Family in 2021. By 2023, both bets had run their course: Bold Penguin sold, and Mylo also sold, freeing up capital while streamlining Lockton’s focus. The exits suggested that Lockton no longer had the appetite—or the capacity—to compete in the U.S. direct-to-consumer space. Then came Lockton Pulse, an Australian digital storefront first announced in late 2024. Its brief online presence pointed to an attempt to sell both personal and commercial policies directly to consumers, but it too quickly flickered out. These experiments signaled curiosity and generated headlines, but ultimately faded from view.
Built organically, Lockton remains defined by a simple pattern: it will not be sold, it will not go public (by design), and it isn’t going digital and direct. As JAB’s chief investment officer Anant Bhalla put it late last year, “Insurance is a good business if it’s private.”
