Top Family-Owned Business in NH: (#30) Avery Insurance Continues to Grow After 125 Years

Tod and Vicki O’Dowd (Photo by Matthew J. Mowry)

Avery Insurance in Wolfeboro has been serving customers in the Lakes Region for 125 years, but much of its growth is due to fourth-generation co-owners Tod and Vicki O’Dowd. Tod’s great grandfather started the insurance firm in 1899 as Avery & Son. Tod, who is now president, joined the family firm in the early 1990s after serving in the Navy and the ski industry in Colorado, and Vicki eventually joined as vice president of marketing and operations.

“We looked at opportunities to grow with special divisions,” Vicki says. That included courting high net-worth individuals with second homes in Wolfeboro by providing concierge services and becoming licensed to write policies in 40 states. Avery has cultivated partnerships with several wealth advisors, CPAs, and attorneys, who are not only clients, but refer other clients. “They are coming in because the experts they trust, trust us,” Tod says.

Avery allows commercial clients to access their HR professional on staff and enrolls them “in a program to reduce their workers comp rates by 20% or more,” Vicki says.

In 2007, the firm opened an office in downtown Portsmouth as it offered an opportunity to tap into a similar clientele base beyond the Lakes Region, Vicki says.

“People who live in Portsmouth and Wolfeboro, or have vacation homes there, tend to have a special kinship with those communities and commit to them for their lifetime,” Tod says. He explains Avery’s success comes from cultivating deep relationships with clients.

What may start as a relationship to secure insurance for a new boat for their summer home in Wolfeboro becomes a more substantive relationship insuring all their needs in NH and their primary state of residence.

They further expanded in 2019, opening an office in New Orleans. Vicki is from Louisiana and decided to pursue the opportunity with a friend who is “heavily connected” in the area, Vicki says, allowing them to have a stronger foothold in the South. The firm has doubled revenue and employee count in the past five years, Vicki says. “We are bullish about our future,” Tod adds.