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When Thomas Babb launched his insurance agency – Thomas Babb Insurance Agency – in an 11-story building in downtown Worcester, Mass., in 1917, he also launched a legacy that would span a century of growth and four generations of leadership.
Babb later sold the agency to Harold Knight, who rebranded it to the Harold Knight Agency. In 1955 when Bob Dik came on board, the agency once again rebranded to become the Knight-Dik Insurance Agency and continued its growth through the acquisition of small agencies in central Massachussetts.
This year, Knight-Dik Insurance is celebrating its 100th anniversary since its 1917 inception on Main Street in Worcester. Although the agency has had multiple addresses since its beginning, all of them have remained on Main Street.
The agency's secret to success and longevity, however, is as much about stability as it is about change, Ross Dik, Bob Dik's son, Harold Knight's grandson and current agency president and CEO, told Insurance Journal.
"We're constantly on the lookout for the next thing," he said.
This strategy has proven particularly effective for the agency in terms of technology. Indeed, when Ross officially joined the business in 1981, he instantly began working on moving the agency technologically forward. He introduced mainframe computers to the office at a cost of $78,000, which included creating a designated air-conditioned room in which to keep them.
"The first day, the system crashed because information was copying itself and there wasn't enough storage space," Ross recalled in a company press release. "Trust me; it was not a highlight of my career. But eventually we got all the...