When David B. O’Maley joined Ohio National Financial Services Inc. 15 years ago, the company was viewed as a regional enterprise in an industry that hadn’t seen a lot of growth.
“The challenge became one of achieving a reasonable enough scale and financial dimension to be considered an enterprise that could survive for the long term,” says the chairman, president and CEO. “The forces that were at play caused us to think differently about where the company needed to be in order to remain a viable independent enterprise over the longer term.”
And that wasn’t easy for a company that was already more than 80 years old at that point. Now, as the insurance and financial services company celebrates its 100th anniversary, O’Maley says it is better positioned for the future, including the economic challenges the industry has faced in recent years.
“The challenge for us was how to reassess the company and recraft it so that it could achieve growth sufficient enough to let all of those things happen,” he says.
The solution was a new vision that would help keep the company focused and invite feedback from its 850 employees.