Kemper Corporation was originally founded as Unitrin, Inc. in April 1990, when it spun off from
Henry Singleton's conglomerate
Teledyne.
Singleton expected the new venture to duplicate the successful spin off of the Argo Group, originally a
workers’ compensation insurance provider, created in 1986. Argonaut's original $20 per share stock appreciated 240 percent by 1990. In 2010, Unitrin purchased all rights to the Kemper name, and began operations as Kemper Corporation on August 25, 2011, with trading on the
New York Stock Exchange under the KMPR ticker symbol. In November 2015, Joseph P. Lacher, Jr. was appointed
President and
Chief Executive Officer. The company unified and refreshed its brand in October 2018.
Fortune Magazine included Kemper on its 2020 list of the 100 fastest-growing companies. On November 23, 2020, the company announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire American Access Casualty Company and its related captive
insurance agency, Newins Insurance Agency Holdings, LLC, and its subsidiaries (collectively “AAC”), in a cash transaction valued at $370 million. On April 1, 2021, the company announced it had completed the acquisition of AAC. AAC provided specialty private passenger auto
insurance in
Arizona,
Illinois,
Indiana,
Nevada and
Texas. The
Kemper Open was a professional
golf tournament on the
PGA Tour for 35 years, from
1968 through
2002. ==Acquisitions==