Atlantic American Corporation, an insurance-holding company based in Atlanta, was incorporated in January 1968. With an emphasis on”niche insurance products in specialty markets,” its subsidiaries include Bankers Fidelity Life, the flagship of the company’s life and health operations; three property and casualty companies, American Southern Insurance Company, Association Casualty Insurance Company, and Georgia Casualty and Surety; and Self Insurance Administrators, which administers claims and provides other outsourcing services. The company’s roots stretch back to 1937, when Austin Dilbeck and Dan Dominey pooled $250 to start the Dilbeckand Dominey Insurance Agency. Before long, the company wrote the most workers’ compensation insurance policies in the state.
The company acquired its current name in 1962, after a number of post–World War II (1941-45) mergers and acquisitions. In 1974 Atlanta entrepreneur J. Mack Robinson bought the company. Offices moved from downtown Atlanta to Buckhead, and the company continued its upward climb in holdings. In 1988 Robinson, already chairman of Atlantic American, became president. In 1995 Robinson’s son-in-law Hilton Howell Jr. took the helm; Robinson remains chairman of the board.
In recent years the company has encountered some difficulties, reporting in 2005 a net loss of $3.2 million with $185.1 million in total revenue. The net loss occurred in part because of a $10.7 million impairment charge relating to a write-down of its General Motors, GM Acceptance Corporation, and Ford Motor Credit investment holdings value, as well as record hurricane-related losses.
