Employees of a Plymouth-based insurance company will now be shareholders as well

Employees of Plymouth-based GoldenCare, one of the largest privately held long-term care insurance brokerages in the country, stand to become shareholders in GoldenCare's parent company.

Dallas-based Integrity Marketing Group announced completion of a new benefit that awards company shares to its 750 employees, including 40 employees at GoldenCare.

Integrity Marketing Group is a distributor of life and health insurance products through its more than 30 brands across the country, including GoldenCare.

On Tuesday it announced it has made its 750 employees shareholders. The employees don't have to pay anything for the shares.

Integrity also retroactively awarded about $50 million in profit-sharing awards to employees. Those cash awards were based on Integrity's performance over the past three years.

That success includes an eightfold increase in parent-company earnings. The growth convinced Integrity's co-founder and CEO, Bryan Adams, to share the wealth.

"We are a people business; there is no business without the people," Adams said in an interview. "Employees are the key to our success, and part of this is to recognize their importance to the business and recognize them and make sure they share in the upside of the business."

Lenny Anderson, the president and CEO of GoldenCare and now a partner with Integrity Marketing, chose to sell to Integrity because of their corporate values. "Integrity is the clear choice in the market because it has the same partnership philosophy I used to build my business over 41 years," Anderson said in 2018.

Said Adams on Wednesday: "GoldenCare has been one of our more successful businesses we've partnered with."

Integrity Marketing's largest shareholders include private-equity firms Harvest Partners and HGGC. Adams thanked those investors and others for supporting the new employee ownership plan.

Integrity will sell more than 1 million new insurance policies this year, Adams said, and help sell over $2.1 billion in premiums this year.

Adams, who founded the business from his house in 2006, said he traveled the country to tell all the employees firsthand of the profit- and ownership-sharing awards.

Integrity Marketing is not a publicly traded company. Employees would reap the value of their stock awards during a change in ownership event.