Keep your eye on Assurant. This New York-based insurance company is on the move–big time. Its earnings are surging– the latest quarterly numbers once again beat Wall Street estimates by a wide margin. Its stock has zoomed 34 percent since the start of 2019–and that’s despite massive sell-offs in the stock market recently. And Assurant CEO Alan Colberg forecasts earnings will continue to grow 12 percent a year.
What’s going on at this 127-year-old insurance company? Colberg reinvented Assurant when he took over as CEO in 2015. He focused the company on providing insurance in three key areas important to consumers–buying a house, a car, and mobile devices.
“The typical consumer, you have a ring camera, you have a Nest thermostat, you have an Alexa, you have a router from Comcast, and you have a cell phone from T-Mobile,” explains Colberg. “You can’t get it all to work. What do you do? Well you call and we actually troubleshoot it and get the consumer up and running.”
That kind of demand pushed up 2018 revenues by 25 percent to $8 billion lifting Assurant’s rank on the Fortune 500 by 62 notches to Number 378 on the list of the largest companies in America.
Colberg says the next burst of growth will come from the trend toward the so-called “connected home” and “connected car.” Assurant, he says, already has several pilot projects in the works. He says he is excited about doing something “new and innovative”.
“I just look at this disruption we have. The change and everything for the consumer,” he says. “It creates lots of opportunity if you’re willing to evolve and transform your company.”
Watch the video above for more from my interview with Colberg.