Masters in Business · Thursday, July 9, 2026
McKeel Hagerty explained Hagerty's strategic shift from competing with major insurance companies to partnering with them. This approach allowed Hagerty to leverage its expertise in collector cars and customer data, leading to successful collaborations with large insurers like Allstate and a scalable business model.
“So after we got the club kind of up and running, I realized, well, what if we just partnered with these companies rather than competing against them, and said, look, we're we're going to do one thing and one thing only.”
“We're going to be expert in these cars. We know the customers really well, we're building a really big, rich bunch of data, and what if we partnered with them? And so the first big partnership like this we landed how twenty two twenty three years ago, and that was with all State, and all State's huge and huge company. I knew they ensured hundreds of thousands of these cars ago exactly lots of you know, lots of interesting things in that company, and I convinced. I met the CEO at the time, and just through kind of people help connect us, and I said, look, I think I can make you better at this one tiny little thing if you just give us a chance. And they're still a partner today, still grow that program grows every year. And now we've just moved through the entire insurance industry. We've partnered, you know, virtually with all of the big insurance companies.”
“And so today if you go, you know, insure your home and your auto and everything with one of them. But you have a vintage car, collector car, whatever you want to call it, that usually comes to us. And so the big scalability of the business was one show up like a club like this member organization, to partner rather than to compete. And if you can partner, you know, because if you're if you're small, it's impossible to compete against a huge company. But if you partner with them, it changes the game.”