Seibels Bruce Group, Inc.

Seibels Bruce, a provider of property and casualty insurance products and related services, was founded in Columbia in 1869 by Edwin W. Seibels and J. B. Ezell and evolved into one of the South’s largest insurance firms. It first occupied the shambles of a small single-story brick building on Columbia’s Main Street that had burned during the Civil War. The firm grossed only $5,000 in premiums for the first year but began operations as a general agency in 1897. The company was incorporated in 1908 under the name of Edwin G. Seibels, Manager, Inc., named for the son of the founder. In 1919 the business became Seibels, Bruce and Company–a salute to the work of Charles J. Bruce, a longtime member of the firm. In 1969 Seibels Bruce began development of an online insurance data processing system, which it marketed to more than 125 companies in the United States and Canada by 1974. This resulted in an increase in staff from 265 in 1969 to 1,200 in 1979. At the close of the twentieth century, Seibels Bruce operated on a smaller scale, and in February 2004 the company’s management moved to make Seibels Bruce a private company.