{"id":1779,"date":"2025-10-14T03:14:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T03:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1779\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T03:14:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T03:14:50","slug":"higginbotham-and-stephens-insurance-services-join-forces-in-west-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1779\/","title":{"rendered":"Higginbotham and Stephens Insurance Services Join Forces in West Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Specialty Benefits Firm Brings Local Leadership, Experience and Relationships to Strengthen Combined Regional Presence<\/p>\n

Higginbotham, a broad-based employee-owned insurance, financial and HR services firm headquartered in Fort Worth, has teamed up with Lubbock-based Stephens Insurance Services, a benefits specialist. The collaboration pairs on-the-ground relationships with added resources to enhance combined service offerings across West Texas and into eastern New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Higginbotham\u2019s strategic growth model, championed by Chairman and CEO Rusty Reid, looks to find prospective partners that share the Fort Worth firm\u2019s values. Stephens has fit that model since its inception in 1997, when Ed Stephens left a comfortable role at a larger agency to build his own firm based on the personal client relationships he considered essential.<\/p>\n

\u201cStephens is West Texas born and bred and laser-focused on relationships and community,\u201d Reid said. \u201cBy combining their trusted local leadership and decades of benefits experience with our resources, we\u2019re building an unbeatable team that can provide single-source solutions to any client in West Texas \u2014 even the most complicated public sector and commercial accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stephens Insurance Services specializes in three key areas: group benefits, individual health and life benefits and Medicare advisory assistance. With the added Higginbotham resources, the firm looks forward to providing a broader spectrum of services \u2014 without diluting that specialty focus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about being good at what we do, and not trying to do everything ourselves,\u201d said owner\/broker Zach Stephens, the son of Ed Stephens. \u201cThat focus on what we do best helped introduce us to Higginbotham, as we\u2019ve had great experiences referring our clients to their property & casualty teams. Now we get to have those same people in house, making sure our clients get everything they need under one banner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens noted that the collaboration will also give the West Texas firm access to larger-firm capabilities \u2014 and the clients who require those capabilities \u2014 without losing their local touch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re particularly excited to work side by side with Higginbotham Public Sector,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cWe\u2019ve talked to school districts out here who are torn between wanting to maintain those West Texas relationships but also needing the depth of service and specialty divisions that only big companies provide. Now we can walk in with those local boots on the ground \u2014 and the backing of an entire specialty practice focused on public sector employers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stephens\u2019 director of operations Dana Teague and owner\/broker Rick Kopytkiewicz shared that even with the obvious synergies and benefits to joining a larger firm, the cultural fit proved the decisive factor in the decision to join forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigginbotham\u2019s employee-ownership model was a big appeal,\u201d Teague said. \u201cWe\u2019ve always prided ourselves on treating our employees like family and Higginbotham lives that value every day. They also offer a great benefits package and industry-wide career paths for our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI started my career on the carrier side, so I know folks at a lot of local agencies,\u201d Kopytkiewicz added. \u201cWhen some of those agencies were sold, I heard mixed reviews. But when I talked to people who had gone with Higginbotham, I got nothing but smiles. Then we met with Rusty and the team, and they didn\u2019t just ask about our numbers, they wanted to know us as people. We left that meeting saying, \u2018If we\u2019re going to do something, it\u2019s going to be with Higginbotham.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens concluded, noting, \u201cThe Higginbotham model isn\u2019t to come in and take over your company and make changes. It\u2019s to stand behind your company with the resources and support you need. We get to keep running our office as usual \u2014 and be the best we can be for our clients, our team and our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Digital Sponsors –\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Specialty Benefits Firm Brings Local Leadership, Experience and Relationships to Strengthen Combined Regional Presence Higginbotham, a broad-based employee-owned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-1779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-plano","9":"tag-plano-headlines","10":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}