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STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD Brown & Riding chairman Chris Brown tells IBA how fostering a culture of cooperation has allowed the wholesale brokerage to set itself apart
TO SAY THAT Brown & Riding chairman Chris Brown got into the company on the ground floor would be an understatement. Brown had been working as an assistant underwriter in Los Angeles for just a year when an opportunity to join the national wholesale brokerage arose. It was 1985, and the brokerage, founded just five years prior in San Francisco, had fewer than 10 employees. Brown’s job was to get the word out in Southern California about the new player in a challenging wholesale market. “I was the new person in town, and it taught me about the importance of differentiation and doing something different than everybody else,” Brown says. “I think it’s one of the core themes that have driven me throughout my career.” Granted plenty of autonomy, Brown proved his worth with early successes in growing the business, though more challenging times lay ahead. The brokerage has always had a concentration in construction, but when the 1992 recession hit, it created “very painful conditions for us,” Brown recalls. “We were challenged to even survive, but I always like to look at the difficult times as really what helps to shape you and helps you understand who you are and what you’re about. That helped to really shape the values of the company.”
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Team player Brown & Riding’s core values were cemented as it grew into one of the top 10 wholesale brokerages in the US by premium volume. In 1990, Brown became president of the company; in 2012, he took on his current role as chairman. During his formative years at Brown & Riding, when he was building relationships with retail brokers and other
also throughout the industry. If our standards are high enough, then they help to raise the bar for everyone else.” In addition to an emphasis on quality and professionalism, Brown also put a high priority on teamwork. “I’ve always been a big believer in the power of people working together and cooperation within the wholesale brokerage business,”
“I’ve always been a big believer in the power of people working together and cooperation within the wholesale brokerage business ... We set our company up to support teamwork in ways that probably most others haven’t done” industry professionals, he realized that the wholesale side of the business was rarely being associated with quality. “Some people viewed it as the segment of the industry you went to if you didn’t have many other options, and I didn’t want to be associated with anything like that,” he says. “So it became a calling of mine to try to help raise the professional standards and quality standards not only within Brown & Riding, but
he says. “Teamwork can be a pretty unusual thing, even today, so we set our company up to support teamwork in ways that probably most others haven’t done.” That value is writ large in the company’s ownership structure – it’s 100% owned by 34 key employees, similar to a partnership. That shared interest in the success of the company goes a long way to help support Brown & Riding’s culture of teamwork, Brown says. The
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27/09/2019 4:20:14 AM