Montana native Mark Davey moved to Jacksonville in 2003 with Fidelity National Financial upon its relocation from Santa Barbara, California. Davey started its property and casualty company in 2000 and bought the business from FNF in 2012, renaming it Stillwater Insurance Group. It employs 300 people.
We’re a national property and casualty insurance company. Most people didn’t realize that FNF had a property and casualty insurance group. We’re a fairly large player – we employ about 100 here, another 180 in Omaha, Nebraska, and about 20 in Santa Barbara.
There was a period in which it was a very difficult time for the industry – a lot of hail events, a lot of hurricane events. FNF decided to sell. I put together a group of investors. We concluded the transaction May 1, 2012.
We employed a local advertising firm, St. John & Partners, to help us with the rebranding. One day they put Stillwater up on the board and I chuckled and said, ‘Who’s been doing their research?’ They said they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I said, ‘I was born in Stillwater Community Hospital and I grew up fishing the Stillwater River.’ It’s an excellent name for an insurance company.
I grew up in Montana, moved to California in 1984 and got into the insurance business by accident. I started helping some relatives doing some accounting reconciliation. We started an insurance company and I started thinking about my own insurance company. Bill Foley, the chairman of FNF, called and asked me if I’d start a property and casualty insurance company for them. He was referred to me by a mutual acquaintance.
I’m one of seven. I have six brothers and sisters. I’m second to the youngest. Two sisters worked on Wall Street. My eldest brother stayed and took over our farming and ranching operations. We also owned the oldest family-owned Ford and John Deere dealership in the United States. The first four children went to private school and my father said, ‘Mark, I would very much appreciate it if you’d go to school in the city.’ I said I would be happy to.
I had a desire to move to New York, but I didn’t have enough money, so I went to California to work in the financial markets. I’ve lived in San Francisco, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Saratoga, Santa Barbara and now Jacksonville. This is probably the easiest place to live – the cost of living and lack of congestion.
Anybody that knows me will tell you I probably have too many hobbies. I love to fish. I love to restore automobiles. I have a lot of old Fords. I have a restoration shop on Philips Highway where we tinker with old cars. We fish and in the winter we’ll normally take a couple of ski trips. There are normally a couple of hunting trips to somewhere in Montana.
We strive to contribute to the community. We’d like to do more business here on a personal and commercial basis. We have a very attractive product in the Jacksonville area. We want people to be aware of the opportunities that we present as an employer here in town, too.