Cooper
& Jones

Led by longtime insurance professionals Matthew Cooper and Bennie Jones, CRML represents the coming together of decades of experience, two established insurance businesses, and a shared vision for what the future of Black-owned insurance can look like.

At its core, CRML exists to help preserve the legacy of independent insurance agencies while giving them access to the resources, technology, markets, and expanded capabilities needed to compete in an increasingly complex industry. But Cooper and Jones' vision reaches beyond insurance. They want to build a truly national African American-owned organization — and demonstrate what is possible when Black businesses choose collaboration, scale, and long-term legacy.

Their business relationship didn't begin with CRML. The two have known one another for nearly three decades while independently building successful careers and businesses in the insurance industry. Cooper leads Community Insurance Center, an agency with a history stretching back nearly 65 years and roots connected to founder Ralph Metcalfe. Jones brings more than three decades of experience through Risk Management Services of America.

For years, they operated independently. Then opportunity arrived at nearly the same time. The two encountered opportunities to acquire other insurance agencies, including firms in Chicago and California. What could have remained two separate business moves instead became the beginning of a larger conversation.

For many entrepreneurs, eventually stepping away from a business creates an uncomfortable question: What happens to everything I built? That problem is particularly important within the independent insurance industry. Agency owners may spend 20, 30, or even 40 years building client relationships, establishing trust in their communities, developing employees, and creating a respected name — only to reach retirement or transition without a clear succession plan.

CRML wants to provide another option. Through acquisitions, mergers and an aggregator model, the organization can create pathways for agency owners who want to transition out of their businesses or gain additional resources while remaining involved.

Instead of automatically being absorbed into a large, impersonal corporation, agencies can become part of an organization that understands the importance of what came before it. For Cooper and Jones, legacy is not something to simply talk about. It is something to protect.

Independent agencies face another challenge: the insurance industry itself is becoming more complicated. Technology is changing. Rules are evolving. Access to insurance carriers can vary dramatically. Customers expect more. And smaller agencies are increasingly competing against organizations with significantly greater resources.

CRML was designed to help close that gap. The organization provides commercial and personal insurance solutions, including property, general liability and homeowners' coverage, as well as surety bonding for construction companies through performance, payment, license and permit bonds.

More broadly, CRML gives agencies access to expanded markets, technology, expertise and full-service capabilities that may otherwise be difficult for smaller firms to obtain independently. That creates a different type of scale. An agency doesn't necessarily have to lose its identity to gain greater capability.

Building CRML doesn't mean simply putting two companies under one name. Cooper and Jones had each spent more than 30 years operating independently. Bringing together different teams, business cultures, operating styles and entrepreneurial personalities requires adjustment.

Entrepreneurs are accustomed to making their own decisions. Partnership requires something different. It requires communication. Compromise. Division of responsibility. And above all, trust. Cooper and Jones credit their longstanding relationship and similar experiences with helping them navigate that transition. Instead of needing to possess identical strengths, they've learned to rely on the areas where each partner brings the greatest value.

That partnership has become part of the organization's strength. And their advice to entrepreneurs considering similar partnerships is straightforward: start with the value being created for the customer. Whether the structure is an acquisition, merger, aggregation or another partnership model, the transaction should ultimately make the customer experience better.

There's another reason this partnership matters. Cooper and Jones want CRML to become an example of Black businesses successfully combining resources and scaling operations. Their philosophy is unapologetically pro-Black business without being anti-anyone else's business.

Supporting Black businesses, in their view, means building businesses capable of hiring people from the community, training them, developing future leaders, competing for larger opportunities and creating economic impact that extends beyond the owners themselves. It also means challenging the assumption that a community-based or culturally connected business must remain small.

Modern technology has changed that equation. Cloud computing and other technological advancements have given smaller organizations access to tools that were once available primarily to large corporations. Cooper and Jones believe that when smaller agencies combine those capabilities with expertise, relationships and smart strategy, they can compete at a much higher level. CRML is putting that belief into practice.

The vision is already stretching far beyond the Midwest. CRML's reach includes clients across the country, spanning from California to Virginia and north to Minnesota.

Cooper and Jones are not finished. Their growth strategy includes organic expansion, strategic acquisitions and the addition of more agencies to the CRML network. Their ambition is to establish a truly national African-American-owned insurance organization with reach across the Midwest, West Coast and East Coast.

It's a large goal. They know that. But their conversation about entrepreneurship revealed something important about how they view ambitious goals: business isn't built entirely through what they jokingly characterize as traditional "MBA math." There is also a human element. Faith. Confidence. Determination. Resilience. The willingness to encounter setbacks, learn from them and keep moving.

The legacy Cooper and Jones envision isn't limited to the agencies they acquire. It's also about the people who work inside them. Smaller businesses can provide employees with something uniquely valuable: exposure. Rather than spending years understanding only one narrow function of a massive corporation, employees can learn how different parts of a business operate, interact with leadership, solve different types of problems and develop confidence across multiple areas.

Cooper and Jones see that as an opportunity to create future executives — and future entrepreneurs. The goal isn't simply to give someone a job. It's to help build their capacity. When employees eventually become leaders, owners or entrepreneurs themselves, the impact of the original business multiplies.

The story of Community Risk Management Legacy captures something central to the mission of Black Business Matters. Black business matters when we start businesses. But it also matters when we scale them.

It matters when established entrepreneurs collaborate instead of assuming they must build alone. It matters when a retired owner has somewhere to entrust decades of work. It matters when a smaller agency gains the technology and resources to compete nationally. It matters when employees are trained to eventually become leaders. And it matters when Black-owned companies grow large enough to create opportunities throughout the communities that supported them.

Matthew Cooper and Bennie Jones aren't interested in simply maintaining what they've already accomplished. They're asking a bigger question: What can we build from here — and who can we bring with us? For Community Risk Management Legacy, the answer is still being written.