Pinnacle buys local insurance agency

Deal creates $4 million unit with more than 10,000 clients

Email | Print By Geert De Lombaerde

Rob McCabe

The biggest Nashville-based bank is now also the owner of one of the region’s largest insurance agencies.

Pinnacle Financial Partners has bought Beach & Gentry Insurance in Murfreesboro and will combine that company with its Miller & Loughry subsidiary. The combined agency – which will be called Miller Loughry Beach – will employ 40 and work with more than 10,000 clients and produce more than $4 million in annual revenue. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This partnership is an ideal cultural fit,” said Clay Beach, Beach & Gentry principal. “We have long admired Miller & Loughry, and combining our talents will allow us to be a more valuable resource to our clients.”

Miller & Loughry chief Ken Halliburton will lead the combined insurance organization, with Beach and Eddie Miller also keeping leadership roles. In 2007, Miller & Loughry accounted for about 11 percent of Pinnacle’s fee revenue and almost 2 percent of its total profits.

Pinnacle Chairman Rob McCabe said the two agencies' property and casualty oferings are "completely compatible" and juxtaposed today’s news with the broader banking environment, where many regional banks “are shedding business lines and are focused on internal issues.”

As for possibly buying more area agencies, McCabe told NashvillePost.com that Pinnacle has "no stated growth goals for our insurance operations. We have looked at the business opportunistically."

Separately, the Knoxville News-Sentinel this morning reported that Pinnacle has lured a senior commercial real estate banker from Fifth Third and a private banker from SunTrust.

At about 1 p.m., shares of Pinnacle (Ticker: PNFP) were trading up 0.6 percent at $20.21. Year to date, they’re down 20 percent and are now at their lowest point since August 2004.