Alan Whitman has a clear message for the US group benefits market: uncertainty is not a threat to the broker model - it is the argument for it.
As CEO of Nichols Cauley, the Atlanta, Georgia-based financial services company, Whitman is executing a Southeast expansion strategy that recently added a 46-year-old employee benefits brokerage to its platform and has several more deals ahead.
Speaking exclusively to Insurance Business Benefits, Whitman outlined how Nichols Cauley is augmenting its integrated financial services platform with a scaled group benefits capability, and why he believes the employee benefits advisory market is built to withstand the headwinds currently battering it.
Nichols Cauley's September 2026 acquisition of The LaRocco Companies, a privately owned employee benefits brokerage and advisory firm headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, significantly deepened the firm's benefits offering.
Founded in 1980 by brothers Andrew and Jeffrey LaRocco, the firm spent 46 years focused exclusively on employee benefits - designing, administering, and managing benefits programs for employers across Metro Atlanta and the broader Georgia market, including compliance with the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
Whitman said that the deal was evaluated the way Nichols Cauley evaluates every potential acquisition: geographic market expansion, focused on second- and third-tier cities in the Southeast, and capability enhancement.
"It all starts with what are we here to bring to our clients, and that is capabilities," he told IBB. "LaRocco had a capability that we just did not have to the same scale - the benefits insurance capability. Not with the relationships LaRocco has."
Whitman said his firm’s acquisition evaluation criteria must serve the firm's overarching client mandate of "manage, protect, grow" - a framework that now spans accounting services, transaction advisory, property and casualty insurance through the legacy Partners Risk Services platform, and a scaled employee benefits practice.
The firm screens acquisition candidates using two non-negotiable questions before any other due diligence begins. "Does the company ascribe to the strategy that we are trying to execute? And do we believe that they can execute it?" Whitman said. "If you say yes to both of those, now let's talk about geography. Let's talk about client base. Let's talk about culture."
Whitman, author of Break the Mold, summarized the philosophy plainly: "All roads lead to and from strategy. If you can't define your strategy and you can't execute it, nothing else matters."
The LaRocco addition came at a moment of acute cost pressure across the US employer benefits market. Healthcare and pharmacy costs continue to climb, litigation around fiduciary duties and broker compensation transparency is intensifying, and the commission-versus-fee debate shows no sign of resolution.
Whitman's view is that those structural issues strengthen the case for a benefits advisor.
"When there's uncertainty, people need advisors," he said. "Whether it's fee for service, whether it's commission-based - that's a structural issue that none of us individual advisors are going to change. What I do know is it's a large expense item, and all companies are eagerly focused on the experience that their employees have. Our subject matter expertise is still very, very, very much needed and at an advantage to people who really don't know the underpinnings of the insurance service or solution."
That argument resonates with plan sponsors and HR decision-makers navigating rising employer healthcare and pharmacy benefit costs in 2026, as shown in the 2025 employer health benefits survey findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Employee benefits represent one of the largest and fastest-growing line items on a company's balance sheet, and the complexity of plan design, carrier selection, and regulatory compliance has only increased as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirements continue to evolve alongside state-level mandates.
Nichols Cauley, backed by Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago, Illinois-based private equity firm that has raised aggregate capital of more than $36 billion since its formation in 1992, according to the firm, now counts more than 10,000 clients across its combined platform.
Its primary focus is owner-operated, founder-led, and family-run small and midsized businesses: the segment Whitman described as the "hidden wealth" of the Southeast.
"Sometimes they're forgotten because most companies want to go larger, more complex," he said. "We're going to bring complexity to the SMB sector and do it very, very well."
Active deals are currently being explored in Raleigh, North Carolina; across the broader state of North Carolina; and in Athens and southern Georgia.
An earlier May 2026 acquisition of the Moliere Group, a Miami, Florida boutique specializing in tax advisory, estate planning, trust services, and international wealth planning, extended the firm's capability footprint into a market outside its second-tier-city geographic thesis - but was pursued for the specialist expertise it brought to the platform.
"We're not a CPA firm bolting on insurance agencies," Whitman said. "We're not an insurance group partnering with a CPA firm. We're a financial services company here to deliver high-level, sophisticated advice to small and medium-sized businesses; the bedrock and backbone of America in the Southeast."
The firm's governance model, which Whitman described as "freedom within a framework," is designed to attract entrepreneurial firms that want flexibility within a scaled organization.
For independent benefits brokerages weighing their options in a consolidating group benefits advisory landscape, Nichols Cauley is positioning itself as an acquirer that leads with strategy alignment rather than financial metrics.
Andrew LaRocco, co-owner of The LaRocco Companies in Norcross, Georgia, said the shared philosophy was the deciding factor. "We chose Nichols Cauley because we share a commitment to helping business owners succeed," he said. "Together, we can help clients take better care of their people, navigate complexity, and make more confident decisions about their business and their future."
