A Brief History
After seven years as an employee of an Independent Insurance Agency in Evanston, Illinois, Tom Tropp formed Thomas Tropp Agency on April 1, 1981. The agency began in a 120-square-foot office rented from the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company at 120 South Riverside Plaza in the Chicago Loop area. The agency had no employees, and no business. The original company contracts included The Hartford Insurance Group and the Ohio Casualty Insurance Group; brokerage arrangements were made through Meeker-Magner Company. Several months into the project, Aetna Life & Casualty Company approached us with a contract offer. Over the years since, the Chubb Insurance Group, Safeco Insurance Company, Cincinnati Financial Corporation, and Fremont Compensation Insurance Company were added to the list of carriers.
In September of 1982, an alliance was formed with David D. Reid, a successful life insurance producer for New England. A new operating name was chosen for this association: Reid-Tropp & Company. Dave’s able assistant, Eileen O’Malley became a part-time employee of Tom Tropp’s, and therefore became the first employee of the firm. Tom moved into Dave’s larger office space down the hall from the New England Life office. Several years later, Dave retired to Cape Cod, and the firm name was changed to Tropp & Company, Inc. New employees were added during the next few years, and the firm expanded into more spacious quarters. A “state of the art” computer system, “Gemini,” was added during this period, and brought the firm into the legitimate computer age. In October of 1991, Tom Tropp was installed as President of the Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois, where he completed a very successful term in this highest elective position for an insurance agent in the State of Illinois.
As the firm continued to grow and continued to form close ties with each client, the office relocated many times within the 120 South Riverside building. In 1997, Tropp & Company expanded its borders by adding an office in Mendota, Illinois, through a merger with The Pohl Agency, Mendota’s oldest and largest insurance agency. Upon joining forces with this agency, a major restoration project on its building commenced, and in 1999, Tropp & Company left 120 South Riverside, and the City of Chicago, behind, moving its entire customer service operation into the building in Mendota.
In May, 2007, Tropp & Company merged with long time friends at Arthur J. Gallagher & Company, the world’s 4th largest insurance broker. Our employees will benefit from the opportunities afforded at a much larger organization, and our clients will benefit from the increased breadth and depth of resources that Gallagher brings to the table. We are excited about this next chapter in the Tropp history!
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