Post 3: “Kill the Golden Goose?”

Due to the great effort of ex-agent Collin Brennan, who had studied the Allstate Annual Reports of nine years, digging out the following figures:

We can see that in the past 9 years Allstate EA system had paid over $1.118 B (average $122 million per year) towards Esurance’s underwriting loss. Allstate took on average each year, 122 million from Allstate to cover the loss of Esurance. A white elephant, indeed! Or, to use a cliché — a cancer in the heart of the business health of Allstate.

Allstate purchased this white elephant in May 2011 for one billion dollars and allegedly, according to Allstate investor Ms. Denise Sundquist, who filed on 5-21-2018 a derivative (in the sense that Ms. Sundquist did not file the complaint for her own personal interest) lawsuit on behalf of all other investors and Allstate Co. against Allstate Co. and fifteen current and former officers and board directors, among whom were Mr. Wilson and Mr. Winter (the predecessor of Mr. Shapiro), the defendants, in Judge Gettleman’s summary of the case[i], breached their fiduciary duties to Allstate, were unjustly enriched by the cash that they received from Allstate, wasted Allstate’s assets, and “misappropriated material, non-public information by selling Allstate shares when they knew that their false statements had artificially inflated Allstate’s stock price.” Id. Early on two similar suits were made by investors: Biefeldt v. Wilson et al., No. 2017-CH-10676 (Ill. Cir. Ct.) and IBEW Local 98 Pension Fund v. Wilson et al.; the two suits were consolidated under Biefeldt on 7-26-18.

These lawsuits, which named the upper echelons individually as defendants, making them personally liable, have struck fear into the hearts of the untouchables, who wanted finding a way to cover up their impotencies in making Esurance profitable. They are not empire-builders who relished in strengthening Allstate to become a strong company, but empire-robbers who chipped away the good assets (EA channels) to fill the belly of a bad investment (Esurance). They took EA agents’ books and staffs by getting rid of them through ABO and minor infraction of rules and regulations to build a mega super agency of direct sales, which has adopted Esurance as a newborn son by erasing its identity. This move of Allstate blunts investors’ accusation of poor performance in acquiring Esurance.

Allstate has successfully ballooned Esurance from 10% of Allstate incomes in 2019 into a direct sales department of super mega agency of 30+% of Allstate incomes in 2022. Is it profitable, though? We shall examine it in our future blog posts. In the meantime, I shall get back to my suit.

[i] Judge Robert W. Gettleman, Memorandum Opinion and Order (Case No. 18 CV 3598), 12-04-2018, p.1.s