Risk Strategies

Risk Strategies

Risk Strategies launched in 1997 as a single-office retail insurance brokerage in Boston, founded by an industry veteran who saw a gap between national consolidators and small local agencies. The firm focused from the start on commercial property-casualty placement for middle-market companies, employee benefits consulting, and high-net-worth personal lines — deliberately avoiding the lower-margin personal auto and standardized small-business segments that dominate many regional brokerages. Kelso & Company acquired a majority stake in Risk Strategies in 2015, accelerating a roll-up that had already produced 15 years of organic and acquisitive growth. The firm's model targets specialist agencies with deep vertical expertise, then folds them into practices covering healthcare liability, real estate risk, construction, education institutions, and financial services. Kelso exited to a new private equity sponsor, Kohlberg & Company, in a deal announced in 2024 that valued Risk Strategies among the largest privately held US brokerages. The platform now places premiums exceeding $4 billion annually across more than 30 US offices, with confirmed capabilities in management liability, cyber insurance, surety bonds, and structured risk solutions for private equity sponsors. Mike Christian has served as chief executive officer since co-founding the firm, a tenure exceeding 25 years that is unusual in consolidator-backed brokerages. The leadership team expanded with a chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and practice leaders for each vertical, though total headcount is not publicly disclosed. Risk Strategies operates a single national platform without international offices, but serves clients with multinational exposures through the Worldwide Broker Network, a consortium of independent brokers spanning more than 100 countries. In November 2024, the firm completed its transaction with Kohlberg & Company alongside a minority investment from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The structural differentiator is a specialist-practice architecture inside a consolidator model — each vertical operates with dedicated brokers, claims advocates, and risk consultants who hold deep domain certifications (RPLU in healthcare, CRIS in construction, ARM in real estate). Most private-equity-backed brokerages aggregate agencies without vertical integration; Risk Strategies builds shared service layers (analytics, loss control, captive management) that individual agencies could not support independently, while keeping client-facing teams specialized rather than generalist.