The story
Kemper Corporation was originally founded as Unitrin, Inc. in April 1990, when it spun off from Henry Singleton's conglomerate Teledyne. Singleton expected the new venture to duplicate the successful spin off of the Argo Group, originally a workers’ compensation insurance provider, created in 1986. Argonaut's original $20 per share stock appreciated 240 percent by 1990. Singleton remained Chairman of Unitrin after it was spun off to shareholders at $31.25 per share, trading on NASDAQ. Unitrin divided its business into three major categories: life and health insurance, property and casualty insurance, and consumer finance, which covered a variety of services including automobile and industrial loans.
In 2002, Unitrin purchased the renewal rights for the homeowners and automobile insurance lines of Kemper Insurance, a long-time Chicago insurance and financial services firm.
In 2010, Unitrin purchased all rights to the Kemper name, and began operations as Kemper Corporation on August 25, 2011, with trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the KMPR ticker symbol.
In November 2015, Joseph P. Lacher, Jr. was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer.
The company unified and refreshed its brand in October 2018.
Fortune Magazine included Kemper on its 2020 list of the 100 fastest-growing companies.
On November 23, 2020, the company announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire American Access Casualty Company and its related captive insurance agency, Newins Insurance Agency Holdings, LLC, and its subsidiaries (collectively “AAC”), in a cash transaction valued at $370 million. On April 1, 2021, the company announced it had completed the acquisition of AAC. AAC provided specialty private passenger auto insurance in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada and Texas.
The Kemper Open was a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour for 35 years, from 1968 through 2002.
From Wikipedia’s article on Kemper Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7