M3 Insurance is ‘a holistic part of the community’

EDITOR NOTE: The Daily Press will be featuring a series of articles on local businesses, highlighting their history and what makes them unique. The series will run on a regular basis in the Daily Press.

— — —

By R. R. Branstrom

rbranstrom@dailypress.net

ESCANABA — M3 Insurance, a full-service risk management firm based in Madison, Wis., recently opened its ninth and newest office at 1615 Ludington St. in Escanaba. The primary clients for the privately-owned M3 are businesses – the company helps with human resources, employee benefits, business insurance, compliance, etc. – but they also serve individuals.

Clients of M3 receive not just insurance policies but also proactive guidance on mitigating risk. The brokerage also prides itself on giving back in areas where they have offices, which is another way of being “a holistic part of the community,” as CEO Mike (“Vic”) Victorson put it.

When Loren Mortenson first founded what was then an independent life insurance agency in 1968, it operated as “Loren D. Mortenson & Associates, Inc.” Over the next 17 years, expansion created more divisions and brought on board the other two men who would make up the three “M”s.

In 1970, Rich Matzelle joined the agency. In ’72, an employee benefits division was added. The name changed to “Mortenson, Matzelle & Associates” in ’77. Charlie Meldrum joined in ’85, the same year the company added property and casualty insurance to its offerings and became “Mortenson, Matzelle & Meldrum.” The risk management department was created in 1990; the private client group formed in 2011. HR services were added in 2023.

For 30 years, the sole office was in Madison. Locations opened in Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Green Bay, Wausau, Rockford (Ill.), Fond du Lac and Kenosha between 1998 and 2022.

It wasn’t until 2008 that the name changed to M3 Insurance.

Vic – who was born and raised in Escanaba and whose father, Don Victorson, was a barber in town for over 40 years – was named CEO in 2005. It took almost 20 years since then for the agency to settle into an office in Vic’s hometown, but “everyone in our company all knew I wanted to have an office in Escanaba for years and years,” he said.

Client Executive Mary Feuerbach, also an Escanaba native, now works at the newest M3 branch in the historic Richter Brewing Company building. Her role is to serve as a first point of contact and “help them strategize for the best direction. They know their business very well, and I know insurance very well,” Feuerbach said.

To help get the office started, 21 clients transferred over to be served out of Escanaba. The office launched quietly in August 2024 and officially in January 2025.

Though offices may only exist in nine places, M3 and its clients do business in all 50 states and on every continent, Vic said. He explained that the firm has transformed in the 32 years he’s been with the company, calling it “more of a year-round risk management firm … than just an insurance placement.”

Clients of M3 come in all sizes, and they are provided different services based on specific need.

“Our (clients) are doing business not just in places like Escanaba, but they’re doing business all over the country and all over the world,” Vic said.

M3 supplies help for those far-flung clients to navigate different laws and legal requirements in various places, interpret contracts, and figure out currency issues for international business.

People with a variety of backgrounds work at M3, helping to serve their clients in a number of areas.

“One way to summarize the work that we do is: we want to help businesses and people identify risk in their lives. We want to help them drive down the cost of managing that risk, and we want to help them build a better business or a better life,” Vic said.

To that end, the company employs financial professionals, nurses, attorneys, wellness professionals, and communication specialists.

“One day, we could be helping somebody research the compliance laws of New York because they’re doing business there. And the next day, we could have one of our nurses teaming up with somebody who’s in charge of safety and helping them build a safer work environment. The next day we could have a forensic IT specialist working with somebody on their cyber risk. And then the next day we could literally have a process engineer walking through a plant helping them identify ways to reorient their workflow,” Vic explained.

Besides directly assisting clients in those ways, the company supports communities through the M3 Foundation, the board of which has a representative from each of the offices to identify worthy local causes. Vic said that the goal is to donate at least $2,000 per year for each of the M3ers at the company; with about 500 employees, that makes for one million dollars annually.

“We have been a bit counter-cultural in our industry in that we want to be radically local,” Vic said. “Being connected there allows us not just to build a better business, but we get to be a way better partner for that community. … We think having a radically local approach and being on the ground, being a part of the community, helps us be better – also at our day job of helping people manage risk.”

Since the M3 Foundation works with each local office, they’ll soon be working with Feuerbach and the other local members of her team to identify different projects or organizations in the greater Escanaba community to become a part of and support philanthropically.

M3 Insurance, as a private company with 61 shareholders, isn’t required to have a board of directors the way a publicly traded company is – but they choose to. It’s made up of nine people – three inside directors and six outside directors (people who aren’t shareholders or M3ers). Outside directors who aren’t drawing a paycheck from M3 can bring an unbiased perspective when presented with a business plan.

“We believe that the right amount of governance helps us run a really good business,” Vic explained. “…That type of rigor, we just think is good, to run a good, transparent business.”