Brown & Brown Brand Guidelines: A 1939 Daytona Beach Agency Turned Global Broker

Two cousins and an agency in Daytona Beach.

Brown & Brown began in 1939 in Daytona Beach, Florida, as a small insurance agency called Brown & Owen. English Wikipedia and the company’s own history agree on the founders: J. Adrian Brown, who the company says had been an agent for Metropolitan Life, and his cousin Charles “Cov” Owen. The company describes the start as “a small, two-partner firm.”

The family name came to dominate the business in the next generation. Adrian Brown’s son, J. Hyatt Brown, joined in 1959 after studying at the University of Florida, and the company says his college links helped the agency win the university’s student accident insurance contract. In 1961 he bought the agency and became its chief executive, English Wikipedia says. The company dates its first acquisition, the Cook Agency of Bunnell, Florida, to 1965.

Growth by buying other agencies became the pattern. In 1980 the firm adopted a decentralised structure, giving local teams more authority, according to English Wikipedia and the company. English Wikipedia says the name Brown & Brown, Inc. was adopted in 1983 to reflect national ambitions. In 1993 the business merged with Poe & Associates; the company says the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved that merger in April 1993, and that the ability to use public stock for acquisitions “fueled a methodical expansion strategy” based on buying middle-market brokers. Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BRO.

Leadership has stayed in the family. In 2009 Hyatt Brown stepped down as chief executive but stayed on as chairman, and his son J. Powell Brown took over, English Wikipedia and the company say. In 2021 the company completed a new headquarters campus in Daytona Beach, an eleven-storey building facing the Halifax River according to English Wikipedia, and in September of that year it joined the S&P 500 index.

Retail, programs and wholesale.

Brown & Brown is a broker, not an insurer: it places cover with insurance companies on behalf of clients. English Wikipedia describes two main parts. The Retail business sells property and casualty insurance and employee benefits to companies, public bodies and individuals. Arrowhead Intermediaries, which English Wikipedia calls “a purpose-built platform,” brings together programs, wholesale and specialty work, serving insurance carriers and other brokers as well as customers.

Most of its growth has come through acquisitions, and the list is long. English Wikipedia names Hays Companies, the Minneapolis employee-benefits and risk firm, in 2018; the digital small-business platforms CoverHound and CyberPolicy in 2021; Orchid Underwriters and CrossCover Insurance Services in 2023; and McNamara Company in 2024. The company says it opened its first international office in 2008, a London wholesale subsidiary called Decus Insurance Brokers, and entered Canada in 2019 by buying Special Risk Insurance Managers, a managing general agent.

Europe followed. The company says it set up operations in Ireland in 2021 by buying O’Leary Insurances, a family-owned broker based in Cork, and that in 2022 the purchases of Global Risk Partners in the United Kingdom and BdB took it into Belgium and Italy. It says the 2023 purchase of Kentro Capital, trading as Nexus Underwriting and Xenia Broking, took it into Asian markets. English Wikipedia adds MacKay Corporate Insurance Brokers in Scotland in 2026.

Today the company says it has more than 700 locations across its group of companies, about 23,000 people and a presence in 19 countries.

How brokers present themselves.

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.

Its largest purchase, closed in 2025.

The biggest step came in 2025. On 10 June 2025 Brown & Brown said it had agreed to buy RSC Topco, the holding company of Accession Risk Management Group, Insurance Journal reported that day. Accession, based in Boston and founded in 1997, was the parent of the retail broker Risk Strategies and the wholesaler and program manager One80 Intermediaries. Insurance Journal reported that Risk Strategies would join Brown & Brown’s retail segment, and that a new specialty distribution segment would be created for the programs and wholesale side, including One80.

The deal is done. Brown & Brown announced the completion on 1 August 2025 in a press release dated Daytona Beach, and Insurance Business reported on 4 August 2025 that the purchase had closed, describing Accession as a specialty managing general underwriter and program manager with more than 5,000 staff. Brown & Brown said that after the deal it had more than 23,000 people. Risk Strategies and One80 are therefore now part of Brown & Brown, not independent firms.

Brown & Brown itself remains a listed company rather than part of a larger broker. It joined the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats index in 2022, which English Wikipedia describes as a list of S&P 500 companies that have raised their dividends for at least 25 years in a row.

The ampersand has been in the name from the start: the firm opened as Brown & Owen, and English Wikipedia says the Brown & Brown, Inc. name was adopted in 1983. The company’s press releases close with a short standard account of the firm, describing it as delivering insurance solutions “since 1939” and giving its count of locations and people.

For a design guide, Brown & Brown shows how a family surname, doubled, can carry a firm from a two-partner Florida agency to a listed group across 19 countries. Compare Gallagher, another American broker that carries a founder’s surname, and Marsh. For this guide we use navy, sand and copper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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