Follow the Plan

Risk management experts Ricardo Espino and Lora Rees took a big chance when they launched a new insurance company in a down market in summer 2011.

But the risk, so far, has paid off. The firm, Lakewood Ranch-based Centauri Specialty Insurance Holdings Inc., is now building a property insurance portfolio in several states. “We have grown nicely and according to plan,” Espino says. “We have not moved from our strategy.”

The strategy at Centauri, named for Alpha Centauri, the brightest star in the southern constellation, partially revolves around going into states with depopulation programs. Those are states where insurance regulators have elected to pare down the total number of policies on state-backed insurance rolls. Other growth has come from generating new business.