New York Sensibility and Sophistication With National Reach and Understanding
Our Gotham Roots Are Nearly a Century Deep
The Ross Companies has called New York its home for nearly a century. Despite our adding a location in Austin, Texas, we still proudly consider ourselves New Yorkers.
One of the amazing things about New York is how it has formed and informed our thinking in terms of solving life insurance, trust, and other financial problems. The city, with its tight-knit, intense set of independent and corporate professionals, has also created an almost endless network of financial advisors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals whom we often serve as consultants.
The Ross Companies also boasts many clients among the wealthy and affluent families of New York City. We work with people whose lifestyle comes as a result of a business or wealth that has been inherited, or people who’ve built their wealth by starting new ventures. No matter how similar, we view each client’s situation as unique. As our president, Norman Ross, says, “Very few client matters are ever the same.”
We are an insurance brokerage, and New York has proved to be a wonderful base of operations. While nearby Hartford, Connecticut is the “insurance capital of America,” New York City has ample muscle. New York Life, MetLife and Travelers headline the insurance companies that are either headquartered or have a significant presence in New York. And why shouldn’t there be a lot of companies? With the city the financial hub of the country (and arguably the world), there are many intersections with the banking and brokerage industries that are headquartered in the city.
New York hosts so many leading companies in business. J.P. Morgan Chase, Verizon, Citigroup, Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, American Express, TIAA-CREF, Paramount, Twenty-First Century Fox, and the New York Stock Exchange are just some of the big names that call New York home.
New York, however, is like Austin in that it has an incredible level of entrepreneurial energy and activity. Austin’s Silicon Hills and New York’s Silicon Alley both celebrate the high-tech sector presence in both cities. Amazon, Google, and IBM are in New York, just like they are in Austin. New York also has an incredibly vibrant financial technology start-up culture that has produced such homegrown names as KickStarter, Betterment, SmartAsset and Bloomberg. Yes, Bloomberg was once a start-up market data provider, which remains one of its core businesses.
When The Ross Companies was founded, the city had a population of around seven million. As we move ahead to today, the city’s population is around 8.5 million, which is something considering that the city hasn’t really added land since 1935. That means there are more than 28,000 people per square mile in New York City, making it one of the most densely populated cities in America.
It’s not just The Ross Companies that calls New York its hometown, but it’s also the hometown of our president, Norman Ross. Through all the city’s reinventions that The Ross Companies has witnessed, New York has remained an exciting city, with incredible dining, theater, live music, sports, fine arts, literature, museums…the cultural list goes on and on. We’ve heard it said that you could visit one bar in New York every day without visiting the same bar twice. New York is the city that never sleeps…or, maybe, never sleeps it off.
The diversity of New York is also astounding! One article says that 167 different languages are spoken in the borough of Queens alone! There may be someone with family roots from every country on earth living in New York. And virtually every religious faith is represented. New York is both more Jewish and Catholic than the rest of America. After all, Brooklyn has long held the nickname “the borough of churches.” In fact, New York has two Catholic diocese: the Archdiocese of New York, which includes Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, plus suburban Westchester, Putnam and other northern counties; and the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens.
For nearly 90 years, The Ross Companies has been advising clients on how to resolve complex financial problems using insurance and other tools. These problems can include estate taxes, succession, buy outs, preservation of assets, or executive compensation. Our long history informs our thinking, and while many situations may be similar, we have learned well that each solution must be unique to the circumstances and individuals being served.