Meet the team

Edward J. “Rusty” Brown, Jr. is highly respected throughout the health care insurance industry for establishing and delivering standards of performance and service designed to exceed all customers’ expectations.

Rusty began his career in the early 1970s, as an agent for the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company in upstate New York. He was the youngest producer honored with entry into the century-old company’s President’s Honors Club.

In 1980, he transferred to the west coast to assume the role of sales manager for Hancock’s Newport Beach, Calif., office. There, Rusty built strong and long-lasting relationships by focusing on delivering a superior level of service, and his office quickly emerged as the company’s top-producing employee benefits agency in the nation.

In 1982, Rusty launched his own local general agency, Innovative Cost Concepts, and subsequently met retail producer John M. Word III. Together, they refined the technology for a revolutionary group health quoting system, and they developed a plan that quickly attracted thousands of brokers and their clients to the services Word & Brown could offer. Major insurers, too, were eager to be represented on this new rate and benefit-comparison platform. By 1986, Word & Brown Insurance Administrators Inc. had become the largest independent small-group health distributor in the nation.

Rusty Brown is a leading force in the development and success of all of The Word & Brown Companies.