Case studies

Highstreet Insurance Partners

Based in Traverse City, Michigan, Highstreet Insurance Partners (Highstreet) provides a broad array of business insurance & risk management; employee benefits & human capital management; financial & retirement services; and personal insurance solutions.

Our journey with Highstreet began in 2018 when, as part of Huron’s ExecFactor® program, we established the company in partnership with seasoned industry executive Scott Wick to pursue a buy-and-build strategy in the insurance agency sector. Our vision was to build the acquirer of choice for dynamic growth-oriented agencies based in small and midsize towns across America.

We closed our first agency acquisition, Traverse City, MI-based Peterson McGregor & Associates, in mid-2018 and never looked back.  Over the next 2 years, we accelerated our level of M&A activity every year acquiring 5 agencies in 2019, 10 in 2020, and 7 in just the first 4 months of 2021.

To support such rapid scaling, we established a professional corporate office in Traverse City, MI adding industry veterans Dave Tuit as CFO and Scott Goodreau as COO, as well as full M&A and accounting teams.  We instituted a systematic program to drive contingent commissions, educated producers on cross-selling, and built industry specialization in areas like agribusiness and transportation. 

In April 2021, we announced the sale of a majority interest in Highstreet to Boston-based private equity firm, Abry Partners.  By our exit, we had closed and integrated 24 acquisitions of community-based agencies in 8 states coast-to-coast while growing revenue by more than 10x – cementing Highstreet’s rank among the top 100 largest insurance agencies in the United States based on revenue.

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NOTES TO HURON CAPITAL PARTNERS PRELIMINARY DUE DILIGENCE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR INDIVIDUALS

“Entities” include corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, trusts or other entities.
Defined by the Securities Act to include a natural person: (a) whose individual “net worth” (or joint net worth with such person’s spouse) exceeds $1,000,000; (b) who had an individual income in excess of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years and who reasonably expects to have an individual income in excess of$200,000 in the current year, or who had joint income in excess of $300,000 in each of the two most recent years and who reasonably expects to have joint income in excess of $300,000 in the current year; (c) who currently holds in good standing a General Securities Representative license (Series 7), Private Securities Offerings Representative license (Series 82), or Investment Adviser Representative license (Series 65); and (d) a natural person “family client” of a “family office” (each such term as defined in Rule 202(a)(11)(G)-1 under the Advisers Act, as amended, and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder), where: (A) the family office has total assets under management in excess of $5,000,000; (B) the family office is not formed for the specific purpose of acquiring limited partner interests in the relevant Huron Capital fund; and (C) the natural person family client’s purchase of the limited partner interests offered is directed by the family office, which has such knowledge and experience in financial and business matters that the family office is capable of evaluating the merits and risks of an investment in such limited partner interests.

In this context, “net worth” means the excess of total assets at fair market value (excluding the value of the primary residence of such natural person) over total liabilities (excluding the amount of indebtedness secured by the primary residence of such natural person but only up to the primary residence’s fair market value, except that if the amount of such indebtedness outstanding at the time of investment exceeds the amount outstanding 60 days before such time (the “additional indebtedness”), other than as a result of the acquisition of the primary residence, the amount of such additional indebtedness shall be included as a liability).

For purposes of this definition, “individual income” means adjusted gross income as reported for U.S. federal income tax purposes, less any income attributable to a spouse or to property owned by a spouse, increased by the following amounts (but not including, in any of the following cases, any amounts attributable to a spouse or to property owned by a spouse): (i) the amount of any interest income received which is tax-exempt under §103 of the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”); (ii) the amount of losses claimed as a limited partner in a limited partnership (as reported on Schedule E of Form 1040); (iii) any deduction claimed for depletion under Code §611 et seq.; and (iv) any amount by which income from long-term capital gains has been reduced in arriving at adjusted gross income pursuant to the provisions of Code §1202 prior to its repeal by the Tax Reform Act of 1986.