Former Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff has joined local insurance consulting firm Spire Risk Management, just days after his tenure on the Commissioners Court ended.
A business partner at the firm, Wolff is working alongside his former high school classmate L.P. Buddy Morris, who founded Spire Risk Management in 2019. The company announced Wolff’s role in a news release Tuesday.
Wolff’s investment in the company makes him a part-owner, but he said he will also have a hand in the business bringing new clients to the firm and as the head of human resources. Spire Risk Management helps small businesses negotiate with large benefit providers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield or Aetna, a service that Wolff said he felt familiar with. Before his time on Commissioners Court, he served as a senior vice president regional human resources director at Citigroup in New York City.
“Not only is it part of my actual professional background, being the former HR guy, but it also is giving me an opportunity to sort of go back into the field that I was in for 20-some odd years before I lost my mind and ran for office,” Wolff said.
Spire Risk Management has its office at the Vantage Bank building on Loop 410 and McCullough Avenue. The consulting firm has 15 employees including Wolff and Morris, who serves as the company’s chairman.
“Kevin is a rare talent – a first-class business leader with a tremendous work ethic,” Morris said in a statement. “We jumped at the opportunity to bring Kevin on board as a partner because we believe his ability to create successful outcomes will help us to scale the business at an even faster pace.”
Wolff decided not to seek reelection after serving 12 years on the Commissioners Court representing Precinct 3. His term officially ended last week.
Morris, who served as the City’s consultant during its police and fire union contract negotiations, acquired locally owned Employee Benefit Services (EBS) shortly after forming Spire Risk Management, building off of the structure that EBS had developed since its founding in 1986. The firm serves a variety of businesses of different sizes, ranging from two employees to 20,000. This is also Morris’s second employee benefits company; in 1998, he started Summit Insurance Group, which was acquired by insurance company Arthur J. Gallagher in 2008.
Morris also started his own venture capital and private equity firm Morris Asset Management in 2009, where he still serves as managing director. He also is a member of the City of San Antonio and Bexar County’s COVID-19 Economic Transition Team.
Wolff will still operate his recently reactivated consulting firm Wolff Business Solutions, but he has already begun work at Spire Risk Management, citing one company that he was able to help save $375,000 annually on their employee benefits.
“I’m happy to do this because I can see how it’s going to be a really big help, especially in a community [where] something like 90 percent of its employee population is employed in small business,” Wolff said. “And I know that those small businesses don’t have the internal expertise to know how to negotiate with the Aetnas of the world.”
