Acrisure Brand Guidelines: A Grand Rapids Agency Buyer With Its Name on a Stadium

A Michigan firm built to acquire.

Acrisure was set up to buy other insurance agencies. Insurance Journal reported in March 2013 that the Grand Rapids, Michigan, brokerage was co-founded in 2005 by its chief executive, Greg Williams, to acquire independent insurance agencies across the Midwest, and that it had completed 26 acquisitions by then. The same publication named Williams’s co-founder in 2016: Rick Norris.

By 2013 it worked as a retail broker for businesses and households. That year Insurance Journal listed property and casualty cover, employee benefits and related administration services, human-resources outsourcing, loss and claims management, surety bonding and personal insurance among its lines.

The first outside owner arrived in March 2013, when the San Francisco private equity firm Genstar Capital acquired the company, Insurance Journal reported. Genstar said it planned to use its network of insurance executives to accelerate growth and take the business national, and three Genstar executives joined Acrisure’s board. Genstar had followed a similar plan with an earlier portfolio company, the insurance distributor Confie Seguros, the report noted. The plan rested on acquisitions: according to Genstar’s October 2016 announcement, the company bought more than 138 retail insurance brokerages under its ownership. Insurance Journal added in 2016 that during those years the company also invested in new data and analytics tools and strengthened its management team.

The model behind those purchases is what Acrisure calls its Agency Partner network. Acrisure’s 2020 brand announcement described the people in that model as what had “fueled the company’s extraordinary growth,” and Williams told Insurance Journal in 2016 that “management and agency partners” controlled the company.

From Genstar to its own managers.

Control passed back to the founders in 2016. In October that year Acrisure announced a definitive agreement for a management-led buyout, led by Williams and a consortium of minority investors, Genstar said. Insurance Journal reported the buyout completed on 22 November 2016, with Williams saying that “management and agency partners now control the company” and that Genstar would remain a shareholder.

The next stage was technology. In 2020 Acrisure acquired the AI-powered insurance businesses of Tulco and formed what it called the Acrisure Technology Group, according to its December 2020 announcement. Insurance Business reported at the time that the company wanted to be known as the most technology-enabled broker in the world, and that its portfolio was heavily focused on small and medium-sized American businesses. In the same announcement Acrisure called itself one of the world’s top ten insurance brokers and said the Tulco technology had already sped up sales development and risk analysis across its network.

The business has kept widening beyond insurance placement. Its website now presents business insurance, employee benefits, payroll and HR, and managed IT among its services, alongside cybersecurity, real estate services and, for individuals, home, auto and life cover and mortgage origination through Acrisure Mortgage. In June 2025 UCF Athletics described Acrisure as a fintech company with operations in 23 countries and more than 19,000 team members.

The group also brokers reinsurance. In the 2020 rebrand Acrisure’s global reinsurance broker, Beach & Associates, became Acrisure Re and Acrisure London Wholesale, the company said. The group remains headquartered in Grand Rapids.

Brokers, consolidators and their names.

An insurance broker has no product to photograph. It sells advice and access: it places cover with insurers on a client’s behalf, and it is paid for judgement and relationships rather than for anything a customer can hold. So brokers present themselves largely through people and expertise. Their websites lean on portraits of client advisers and specialist teams, and on named leaders who speak for the firm in the trade press.

Expertise is shown through publishing. Brokers issue risk-management reports, market outlooks and webinars on subjects such as cyber exposure, property values or employee benefits, and many organise their sites around industry practices, from construction and aviation to healthcare and sport, and around capabilities such as casualty, financial lines or private client. Howden’s US website, for example, is laid out by industries and capabilities in this way.

Scale is shown through maps and counts. Office networks spread across countries are a common feature, and so are round numbers of locations and people: Brown & Brown’s website gives a count of more than 700 locations and about 23,000 people. In a sector that has grown through consolidation, acquisitions announcements are a regular part of a broker’s news page, and the dates of agreement and completion are often months apart.

The rest of the presentation is about belonging. Brokers sponsor sport, the arts and community causes, run charitable foundations, and give recruiting pages much of the weight, because the people are the offer. This guide sets out what can be checked about each firm — who founded it, who owns it now and from when — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A logo evolved, then a name on a stadium.

Acrisure’s current identity dates from 8 December 2020, when the company unveiled a new brand. It said the new logo was “an evolution of its legacy mark” meant to acknowledge its work with artificial intelligence, and it adopted the tagline “Powered by Exceptional Partnerships and Technology,” reported by Insurance Business and Coverager. Williams called the rebrand “an outward display” of the company’s intentions. Its website today greets visitors with “Your partner in ambition.”

The name became far more visible through naming rights. On 11 July 2022 the Pittsburgh Steelers announced that their home ground, opened in 2001 as Heinz Field, would become Acrisure Stadium under a 15-year agreement starting with the 2022 football season, WESA reported; financial terms were not released. The station described Acrisure as a Michigan-based insurance and financial technology company. At a news conference the next day, Steelers president Art Rooney II declared that “starting today, the new name of the stadium is Acrisure Stadium,” Steelers.com reported, and credited Thomas Tull with bringing the two sides together. Williams, a longtime Steelers fan, said he wanted his company to become part of the city.

A second stadium followed through a subsidiary. FBC Mortgage joined Acrisure in 2022, and when it was renamed Acrisure Mortgage, the University of Central Florida’s football ground, FBC Mortgage Stadium, became Acrisure Bounce House from 1 July 2025, UCF Athletics announced, as part of a broader move to unify the Acrisure brand. The stadium kept its long-standing “Bounce House” nickname inside the new name.

For a design guide, Acrisure shows how a company built from hundreds of acquired agencies can make one short word carry everything, from a tagline about partnerships to a stadium facade. Compare HUB International, another acquisition-built broker, and Lockton, a privately held American broker. For this guide we use a deep indigo, a midnight and a stadium gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Acrisure’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.