Meile plans to grow Titan’s presence in Central New York

SALINA — Titan Insurance & Employee Benefits Agency, LLC is a small firm with a big name — and a Central New York manager who doesn’t shy away from using weighty analogies to compare the company to bigger competitors.

“It’s like an elephant turning around in the kitchen,” says Mark Meile, Titan’s district manager for Central New York. “For a national firm, when there are big changes that need to take place, it takes a long time. With a smaller firm that is a little ahead of the curve technology-wise, they’re able to adapt. And that’s attractive.”

Meile heads Titan’s district office in Suite 290 at 290 Elwood Davis Road in Salina. The office, which is Titan’s first foray into the Central New York market, opened about two months ago.

Titan is based in Rochester and also has satellite offices in Canandaigua and Geneva. Its current president and CEO, Michael Gurowski, founded the company in 2006. It has 15 employees.

Only one of those employees is based in Salina — Meile, who joined the company to help it establish and grow its presence in Central New York.

Meile has a personal goal of picking up 10 new clients by the end of the year. He hopes to grow Titan’s Central New York presence to the point where the Salina office will need to add staff members. The number of new employees and timeline for adding them will be dictated by growth, he says.

Meile is confident companies will listen to him about Titan’s offerings. Firms are already concerned with human resources, he says.

“Companies are just wondering what they are going to do,” he says. “The biggest challenges in the last five years are double-digit increases in insurance, especially the medical. Compliance — how do they stay compliant? Human-resources compliance is constantly changing. Health-care reform. And companies really need help.”

The Central New York Titan office is about 240 square feet of leased space at the Thruway Office Building at 290 Elwood Davis Road. Meile is in the office every day, but he spends much of his time visiting prospective clients, he says.

Meile covers Central New York, the North Country, and the Southern Tier down to Binghamton. He will also travel east to Utica, although Titan’s other offices cover areas to the west of Central New York.

Titan specializes in serving companies with between 50 and 500 employees, according to Eric Gilbert, the company’s executive vice president of sales and practice leader. Companies of that size are greatly affected by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the federal health-care reform law, he says.

“Those are groups that are really struggling with several components of health-care reform,” he says.

Expanding into Central New York was a natural move for Titan, according to Gilbert. The firm already served some employer groups that straddled the area between Rochester and Syracuse, so the company was already familiar with both insurance markets, he says.

“We’re a solid Rochester player,” he says. “We have hundreds of clients in the greater Rochester and Monroe County area. But being just in Rochester isn’t a good way to support Central New York. To manage them from afar isn’t a strategy that we want to employ.”

Titan will not be adding any more offices in the near future, according to Gilbert. It will keep the same footprint for at least the next two years, he says.

“I would rather spend time in Central New York growing our presence than strain it by further expanding,” he says.

Titan has generated “double-digit” revenue growth each year since its founding and expects projects to grow at the same rate for the next three years, according to Gilbert. He declined to share specific revenue totals. 

In addition to acting as a broker and managing employee-benefit plans, health-care packages, and business insurance, Titan often takes on a consultant role when working with a client company, Gilbert says.