CareValue, a rapidly growing national field marketing organization (FMO) based in Canandaigua, New York, and specializing in senior life and health insurance, has been acquired by Alliant with Senior Market Sales® (SMS) — one of the industry’s premier insurance marketing organizations.
SMS President Jim Summers said CareValue’s technology platform, its success as a market leader serving independent insurance agents, and its impressive growth attracted SMS as it continues to grow through strategic acquisitions. CareValue ranked No. 69 on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in the New York City metro region in 2021.
“CareValue’s technology stack when combined with SMS’s proprietary technology will give SMS-contracted agents a major advantage in today’s marketplace,” Summers said.
CareValue has invested heavily in the development of proprietary technology for agents. For example, the company provides the only FMO-offered State Pharmaceutical Assistance Program (SPAP) solution in the marketplace that allows agents to help their clients apply for assistance in paying their prescription drugs and/or Part D premiums digitally instead of by the more cumbersome methods of fax or mail. This digital enrollment process triggers a special election period (SEP) for Medicare eligibles, enabling them to enroll year-round.
“Formalizing this partnership with SMS through an acquisition will fuel further growth and ensure long-term success in our markets,” said CareValue President Brian Doyle. “By extension of SMS, we’re also excited to join the Alliant family. Together, we’re bigger, better, stronger.”
Doyle has been in the insurance industry since 1996, he founded CareValue in 2010, and since 2013 has partnered with SMS. CareValue has leveraged SMS’s industry-leading back-office support, proven marketing systems, and top health and wealth carrier product portfolio.
The decision to join SMS, Doyle said, was based on Alliant and SMS’s ability to provide additional infrastructure and support that will help CareValue springboard into new territory and ensure long-term growth, as well as focus even more on agents to provide operational and customer service excellence. Specifically, CareValue was attracted to Alliant Insurance Services, which opens commercial and group insurance markets to CareValue’s agents, and SMS’s new revolutionary Client Stream® Lead Exchange lead-generation platform. In 2020, SMS joined the Alliant family of businesses, which now collectively is one of the largest insurance brokers in the United States. Alliant was recently honored as a winner in the 2022 Fast Brokerage Listing with 9,000 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and more than $26 billion in premiums. In 2022, Alliant also moved up two spots to #8 on the list of Largest Brokers of U.S. Business.
Additional reasons for partnering with SMS, Doyle said, include SMS’s history of successful acquisitions and SMS’s integrity — acting as it promises and passionately serving agents and their clients.
Summers said that the two companies’ alignment of values was critical to the partnership, just as it has been to all of SMS’s acquisitions.
“In today’s hyper-competitive acquisition environment, SMS continues to stand out for our commitment to the agent and their client,” Summers said. “We look forward to growing even more by staying focused on our values and partnering with companies who share those values.”
