ValMark Securities was originally founded as Executive Insurance Agency in 1963 by Lawrence S. Rybka, an industry innovator who formed the industry’s first multi-carrier producer group, encouraging financial service professionals to build independent businesses under their own brand. Rybka also was one of the early pioneers to integrate technical advice with product recommendations by structuring attorney/CPA units to support one to three person sales teams. The concept of multi-disciplinary teams is still prevalent at ValMark today with one-third of the company's Member Offices having a JD or CPA on staff.
During the 1970s, Rybka extended the concept of multi-disciplinary teams along two lines. Executive Insurance Agency (EIA) became one of the first product providers in the nation to offer Total Financial Planning through its unique multi-specialist teams. Rybka also set a precedent in the area of alternative distribution by being the first in the industry to integrate financial planning teams into national property and casualty insurance firms. By the 1990s, Rybka evolved this practice into a full-time consulting enterprise, ultimately placing hundreds of financial service executives inside national, international and regional banks, wirehouses, CPA firms, trust companies, law firms, property and casualty brokers and benefits companies.
In the early 1980s, record-high interest rates triggered a market explosion in variable life insurance. Executive Insurance Agency’s focus on high net worth clients gave the firm a natural market for variable products and catapulted the agency into top position as a national market leader and innovator. The growing complexities associated with the sales of variable life – as well as the company’s continuing emphasis on estate and financial planning – created the need for specialized education for EIA’s advisors. In 1982, EIA hosted the first School of Life, a two-day education conference designed exclusively for the needs of EIA estate planning insurance professionals. Today, the three-day School of Life is recognized as one of the industry’s most distinguished educational forums. In 2009, the conference was attended by over 400 wealth management professionals.
In the mid 1980s, Larry Rybka’s son and ValMark's current CEO and President, Lawrence J. Rybka, joined the firm after graduating from Wake Forest Law School and working as a financial planner in a regional estate planning firm. In 1988, “Larry J.” applied his background in financial services and corporate law to develop one of the industry’s first programs for legally enabling CPAs to offer financial services to their accounting clients. The program evolved into ValMark’s Professional Partnerships Program, recognized today as one of the most successful partnership programs in the industry.
By the 1990s, innovations in the life insurance industry created a crowded shelf of products – a confusing maze to most consumers – in which the annual premium for a $1 million policy could vary between $500 and nearly $500,000, a differential based on as many as 30 different pricing variables. In response, Larry J. developed The Life Insurance Design Questionnaire, the industry’s first analytical tool for matching a client’s insurance needs to the product. The Design Questionnaire was widely praised in the insurance community and Larry J. became the industry authority on consultative product recommendations —appearing as a keynote speaker and guest author in most of the industry’s professional associations and journals. The Life Insurance Design Questionnaire remains an industry standard and an updated model is still in use at ValMark today as the foundation for several subsequent analytical tools such as The Trust-Owned Life Insurance System and The ClearView System.
By the mid 1990s, EIA had become one of the nation’s largest independent marketing organizations and distributors of variable products for the wealth transfer market. Having reached a critical mass in sales of registered products, the firm established its own broker dealer, ValMark Securities, in 1997. That same year, the company also established ValMark Advisers, an SEC-Registered Investment Advisory Firm to accommodate the organization’s growing emphasis on fee-based planning in the wealth transfer process.
ValMark’s investment business steadily flourished alongside its life insurance silo as clients of ValMark’s Member Firms began to take note of the company’s progressiveness and stable growth – despite the volatile market and economic conditions in the early years of the millennium. In 2002, ValMark developed and introduced The Optimized Portfolio System (TOPS), an innovative portfolio allocation strategy using Exchange Traded Funds, which has become an industry standard in the use of ETFs. In 2004, the company added life settlement brokerage to its offerings and designed an end-to-end system for helping Member Firms safely and effectively offer the service to their clientele. That same year, Larry J. became a member of the Board of Directors of AALU, the industry's watchtower of government affairs. His national involvement in industry legislation coincided with New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer’s 2004 assault on the insurance industry, prompting Larry to develop, with the help of a Member Firm Advisory Committee, an NAIC Model-compliant system for “transparent’ insurance transactions, called The ClearView System.
In 2006, ValMark entered into a strategic partnership with Clark Benson, the Wealth Transfer and Financial Planning arm of Clark Consulting, a publicly-traded executive benefits company. A minority shareholder in ValMark Securities, Clark Benson is represented on ValMark’s Board of Directors by James Benson, President and CEO of Clark Benson and the former president and CEO of John Hancock.
Today, ValMark maintains its strong position in the wealth transfer market. With a long history and established reputation for expertise, innovation and integrity, it has become the broker dealer of choice for the nation’s leading independent wealth advisory firms.