Robert Menke, the founder of one of St. Petersburg’s largest private corporations and a key figure in a scandal over attempts to spy on a state insurance regulator, has died at 89.
Menke, the chairman and chief executive of insurance company Bankers Financial Corp., died “peacefully at home with his family by his side” last week, according to a statement from the company.
Bankers Financial is the parent of a handful of insurance and professional services companies, including Bankers Insurance, which has clients in more than 45 states. Menke was part of the board of directors of the company until the last months of his life.
“It was his entrepreneurial spirit and dogged perseverance that brought him into the insurance business and laid the foundation for his and Bankers’ success,” the company said in a statement.
“It’s hard to find people like Bob who have been in the industry as long as he has and seen the changes that have taken place here in Florida,” said Ray Blacklidge, executive vice president of American Traditions Insurance Company in Pinellas Park, who knew Menke for three decades. “He lived it, he understood how we got to where we were, the good and the bad, what we should do and what we did. It’s a shame for the sector.”
A graduate of the University of Florida, Menke founded Bankers in 1976 after the state closed its predecessor, Bankers Fire & Casualty, when its liabilities, primarily in the auto insurance business, exceeded its assets. In rebuilding, Menke saw no need to rebrand the business. The strategy worked, as the new company managed to retain about 95% of the previous policyholders.
“There was still goodwill built up around the name, and also we didn’t think you should hide behind a new name,” he told the St. Petersburg Times in 1987.
In the 1980s, the company was one of the first to dive into the flood insurance market, eventually becoming the fourth largest flood insurance company in the country. It also diversified its portfolio, adding products ranging from surety bonds to contact lens insurance to RV and contractor casualty.
“As a small, regional company, that’s what you do,” former Bankers chairman David Meehan said. “You’re looking for pockets of companies and things that are outside the mainstream, because you can’t really compete head-on with the big guys.”
As the bankers grew, some executives grew frustrated with state regulators, who they felt treated the company unfairly. In 1995, Bankers hired, with Menke’s authorization, a private investigator to look into the personal life of Kevin McCarty, an influential state insurance official who would later become Florida’s insurance commissioner. The investigator followed McCarty into his personal life and illegally tapped his phone in search of information that could discredit him before the state.
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The company admitted to hiring the private investigator, but denied knowledge of the wiretapping. Menke later described the investigation as “entirely legal” and said the state’s subsequent investigation into Bankers was “unfair and illegal” and a “witch hunt.”
Still, in 2000 the company settled with McCarty for more than $2.5 million. Two years later, it agreed to pay the state another $1 million, oust its president for three years and bar its general counsel from working with the company again. As part of the deal, Menke kept his position on the bankers’ board. But the test seemed to leave him less enthusiastic about pushing for regulatory reform, Blacklidge said.
“He withdrew for a while from the political side of things, and he wasn’t helping to lead the way for almost a decade,” Blacklidge said. “It definitely changed his company plans and I’m sure Bob wouldn’t say it hurt his feelings, but I think it did.”
At its peak, Bankers Financial had about 1,000 employees and annual revenue of more than $500 million. Last year, Bankers Insurance pulled out of Florida’s homeowners insurance market, blaming the Legislature for failing to combat the “financial challenges facing property and casualty insurers,” it said in a statement, which includes “fraud and litigation that exponentially exceeds all other states.”
Menke always ran Bankers as a family business. His son-in-law, John Strong, is the company’s CEO, and his son Rob Menke has been its president since 2016. Two other sons, Brent and Kyle, serve on the company’s board of directors alongside Strong and Rob.
Menke himself was listed as a director of Bankers Financial Corp. until 2022 and, according to Meehan, was planning a 90th birthday party for June.
“He never really stopped working, thinking or doing,” Meehan said. “I always had a project all the time.”
