Sweet Lou

His company, Lakewood Ranch-based MGA Insurance Group, has spent $250,000 on software, hardware and intricate data-encrypted cyber security upgrades in 2014 alone, and at least $3 million over the last five years. With a payroll of around 45 people, that's an expense of more than $72,000 per employee.

The outlay doesn't even include this unusual tidbit: A pair of MGA employees are assigned exclusively to improve the firm's search engine optimization and social media presence — non-revenue generating positions that hold cachet at MGA. “We don't want to have a customer surf on the Internet,” Marinaccio says. “We want a customer on the Internet to come into our funnel.”

Marinaccio, who founded the company in 1984 in Chicago, says the investment is more of a strategy component than a risk. It goes to the crux of what he says is his No. 1 goal at MGA. That's to make it easy for customers to do business with the company, an increasingly complicated task in the ever-shifting insurance industry.