The David Agency Insurance

Our History and Culture

Our History and Our Culture

From the first day of business on January 2, 1975, The David Agency was founded on the Principal of Quality Insurance Products and Services provided to Quality Clients. It was the owner, David Meilahn and one employee, Vickie Kloock that set up office in Oak Park, Illinois during that first year.

The David Agency has always invested in our people. As we steadily grew in clients, we continuously searched out employees and associates, both experienced and inexperienced, that possessed the character and attitude to always put the client first and foremost. Education and Experience have been stressed consistently for our staff. That tradition has continued as we have grown to our current staff of 35 Professional Agents, including five individuals who have been with our agency over 25 years.

One of the most difficult periods, in the history of the agency, was the Great David Agency Fire, a catastrophic fire that occurred on January 2, 1991; the 16th anniversary, to the day, of our business founding. The fire destroyed the entire office building that housed The David Agency. Not only that, the all night fire happened on the coldest day of the year with the temperature reading at 13 degrees below zero. “Did you have enough Insurance” and “Hope you had a good Insurance Company” became tired phrases as we went about our business of rebuilding our physical agency while maintaining 100% uninterrupted service to our clients. The lessons learned in that experience gave each David Agency professional the opportunity to experience our greatest service need to our clients – the critically important function at the time of a catastrophic loss.

As a 36 year-old organization, The David Agency has worked closely with other insurance agencies, and several have ‘merged’ into The David Agency. This has created some wonderful experiences, bringing together new employees and the clients that they serviced. At one point, these mergers grew our agency to 6 neighborhood offices in Chicago, Berkeley/Elmhurst, Oak Lawn, Countryside, and Forest Park in addition to our main office in Oak Park. In 1997, after the ‘Great David Agency Fire’ we consolidated all of our offices to one location in our current home in Elmhurst.

Insurance Companies have also played a very important part in the history of The David Agency by providing the best possible products and services to our clients. We have always believed in working with responsible insurance companies and created long term relationships with both national and regional companies. Under normal circumstances, we will always place our insureds with Best ‘A’ Rated companies. Under certain circumstances, an insured may choose a less than Best ‘A’ Rated company due to circumstances that are not conducive to being written with an ‘A’ rated company.

Along the historical road that The David Agency has taken, we have become associated with some very fine achievements and recognitions from our insurance companies, including numerous ‘Agencies of the Year’, Presidents Awards, Top Brass, etc. In addition, we have sat on several of our Insurance Company’s Advisory Boards including AAA, Utica National, The St. Paul, The Hartford, PIIAI and others. Two notable events include:

1979 – The David Agency was named the exclusive agent for the Printing Industries of Illinois and Indiana Association Insurance (PIIAI) Program. This included Property & Casualty and Group Benefits Insurance Programs.
1998 – We created the first Member Owned captive insurance program for Doctors and their Medical Groups, named Medicus Insurance Company, Ltd, based in Georgetown, Cayman Islands. We formed this insurance company to help Doctors curb their cost, while improving their Risk Management in administering their Professional Liability exposure.

The David Agency is old enough to have experienced the transition from the traditional ‘all paper’ method of doing business to the current ‘paperless’ society. Since that time, we are on our 5th generation of that technology, now virtually 100% paperless, downloading and uploading, doing real-time record keeping, and awaiting the day that the fax machine will be removed from our day to day work. What’s most impressive to our old timers – no more file cabinets, no more physical storage of records.

Speaking of technology, our Founder David D. Meilahn was the first person in the United States to make a Cellular Phone Call. That call was made on Dave’s birthday, Friday the 13th of October, 1983, at Soldier Field in Chicago, where Ameritech, now Verizon, turned on the first cell system. Interestingly, that first call was made to Alexander Graham Bell’s Granddaughter in Germany. When the Cellular System converted from Analogue to Digital in the mid-nineties, the event was again commemorated at Soldier Field where David donated the original phone to the Museum of Science and Industry. Dave calculates that he has used 12 minutes of his total 15 minutes of fame.

Today, The David Agency takes Great Pride in being called a ‘Boutique’ Insurance Agency. Our clients are able to ‘plug’ themselves into our organization for all of their Personal and Business insurance needs. We work as teams, each a member of a group of professional agents that caters to each and every insured’s needs in every aspect of their life. Whether it is their Business Insurance needs, their Health or Benefits needs, Life Insurance needs, or their Personal Insurance needs for Auto and Home, The David Agency will make sure to treat you just like family.

Consult the Chicago Insurance Agents at The David Agency today to learn how we can help develop personal insurance, business insurance and employee benefit plans that are right for you and/or your business.