Justine and Terry Zavitz discuss their lunch meeting with a client at the front of their office in London, Ont., on Dec. 5.Over the past 40 years, Zavitz Insurance and Wealth has entertained a steady deluge of acquisition offers, but the response from the family-run insurance business, based in London, Ont., was the same every time.
Eventual succession was on both Justine’s and Terry’s minds when the business was approached by Chicago-based HUB International Ltd., an insurance brokerage that was interested in buying the firm for its disability insurance expertise. By then, Zavitz Insurance and Wealth had grown to 17 employees and was serving more than 3,000 clients.
One of the biggest concerns with the sale was ensuring that Jarrett was on board with the deal. Jarrett, who is five-and-a-half years younger than Justine, joined the business in 2018 and didn’t get the opportunity to buy shares. “I had been very vocal with my younger brother that I wasn’t going to do the sale if he didn’t want us to,” says Justine.
Both Terry and Justine credit the sale’s success to the family’s intergenerational transparency. “We’ve always been very open about what goes where and how it goes,” says Terry, who set up a donor-advised fund – or a charitable investment account – in the family name. According to Steele, the goal is to preserve and increase the family wealth so it’s not eroded as it’s distributed across generations after the sale. “ needs to go out and put their intellectual capital to work in the world alongside the financial capital they’re inheriting and keep the wealth growing,” he adds.