He Was a $10,000-a-Year Football Coach — He Built an Insurance Giant

Art Williams was earning about $10,000 a year coaching high school football in Georgia when his father’s sudden death made him take a closer look at life insurance. He wanted to understand how families protected themselves financially and why some policies cost so much more than others. The more he learned, the more convinced he became that millions of Americans were spending too much on coverage.

Williams had no background in banking or finance. But he was about to enter the insurance industry with an idea that would eventually turn a small agency into one of the largest life insurance sales organizations in America.

An Idea That Changed His Career

Around 1970, Williams began learning about the differences between term life insurance and policies that combined insurance coverage with a savings component. Term insurance generally offered substantially cheaper coverage initially. Williams believed families could buy the protection they needed and invest the money they saved, rather than pay higher premiums for a policy that also accumulated cash value.

He called the approach “buy term and invest the difference.” It was a simple message, and Williams thought ordinary families would understand it immediately. But there was a problem: traditional insurance companies had spent decades building their businesses around products that worked differently.

Williams spent several years selling insurance and learning how the industry operated. Eventually, he decided he could do better by building his own company around the approach.

Starting With 85 Salespeople

In 1977, Williams founded A.L. Williams & Associates. The company started with seven regional vice presidents and 85 sales representatives.

Williams brought a different management style to the business. His years coaching football had taught him how to recruit people, give them clear instructions and get them working together toward a goal.

He used those same skills to develop a sales organization that welcomed people without previous insurance experience. Representatives received training and were encouraged to build their own networks of customers. Many worked part-time, selling policies to people they knew through friends, family and their communities.

The arrangement allowed the business to expand into areas where traditional insurance agents weren’t always reaching customers. Instead of opening expensive offices everywhere, Williams could grow through a network of representatives already living in those communities.

His company meetings had an unmistakable football atmosphere. There were enthusiastic speeches, ambitious targets and plenty of encouragement to push harder. Some people loved the energy, while others found the sales culture too aggressive. Whatever people thought of his style, the company was growing quickly.

Taking On America’s Biggest Insurers

By 1987, A.L. Williams had become one of the most powerful organizations in the American life insurance industry.

A business report from United Press International described the company’s operations as selling more term life insurance than any other insurer in the United States at the time. According to figures cited in the report, the total face value of policies written the previous year exceeded the combined amount written by Prudential and State Farm.

Its sales network had expanded to more than 180,000 representatives, most of whom worked part-time. The organization operated across 49 American states and Canada.

Those numbers were difficult for established insurance companies to ignore. Competitors began training agents specifically to challenge the A.L. Williams approach, particularly when representatives encouraged customers to replace existing cash-value policies with term coverage.

Williams wasn’t interested in backing away from the competition. He believed his company could reach middle-income households that weren’t receiving much attention from traditional financial firms.

By the late 1980s, his organization had become a serious rival to companies that had been selling insurance for generations.

From Insurance Policies to a Financial Empire

Williams began expanding the business beyond life insurance. Its operations eventually included mutual funds and credit products, with plans to enter additional areas such as mortgages and real estate. The company was becoming a major financial services operation rather than simply an insurance agency.

Its success also attracted the attention of larger corporations. During the late 1980s, companies that would eventually become part of Citigroup acquired major businesses connected to A.L. Williams.

The organization went through several changes in ownership and structure, eventually becoming closely associated with the Primerica name.

In 2010, Primerica became an independent publicly traded company. Its modern insurance distribution business still traces its roots to the agency Williams founded in 1977.

The Idea Outlasted the Company He Started

By the time Primerica became independent, more than three decades had passed since Williams gathered his first 85 representatives. The business had changed owners, expanded its services and grown far beyond anything he could have managed personally.

But one thing remained familiar. Primerica continued using the phrase Williams had helped make famous when he first entered the insurance industry.

“Buy term and invest the difference.”