The EMO Agency – Horse Insurance By Horse People
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220 – March/April, 2024
By Sarah Welk Baynum
The EMO agency has a motto–“EMO is an agency of horse insurance specialists who are also horse people who ride, compete, and fox hunt. That’s why horse owners, instructors, trainers, horse farms, and event managers nationwide trust their insurance needs to EMO.”
For horse people, especially people who are professionals in the horse industry, their horses are an invaluable part of their lives and businesses. Having people who truly understand the horse world means they know how to properly protect horses and the people that value them.
“I think a client can relate to their agent if they know horses and can relate to what is important to the client. Their advice is based on experience because they have been there,” says EMO co-partner Sue Bopp.
The EMO Agency – How It All Started…
The EMO Agency was started in 1983 by Ernest M. Oare, a prominent horseman in Warrenton, Virginia.
“Ernie was involved in limited partnerships with Thoroughbred racehorses and he realized that since these valuable horses needed to be insured anyway, he would start an insurance agency. He then purchased a small, local agency in Virginia,” says Senior EMO Equine Account Manager Chris Hocutt. “Ernie and his wife, Betty, are icons in the hunter-jumper industry and in the performance horse industry, as well. The agency then hired Martha Hall, Sue Bopp, and Mike Moran in the late 1980s, and they became partners in the agency.”
Chris Hocutt and Bill Hartman were later added to the team to run the new West Coast office they opened in Burbank, California. The goal was to grow the business in the Quarter Horse and Morgan industries.
In 2014, EMO was purchased by a larger, upstate New York-based agency called Marshall & Sterling who wanted to expand their presence in the equine industry. Marshall & Sterling is now the parent company of EMO, and the merger has proven beneficial to their growth.
Horse Insurance by Horse People…
Click here to read the complete article
220 – March/April, 2024
