Chattanooga-based insurer Unum expects to protect a record number of customers in 2023, with the figure around 45 million, said company Chief Executive Rick McKenney on Friday.
"That's up from 40 million a few years ago," McKenney said in an interview at the Austin Hatcher Foundation for Pediatric Cancer's offices, where the insurer presented a $175,000 check to mark Unum's 175th year in business.
(READ MORE: Unum turns 175 with 'birthday party')
McKenney, who toured the foundation's Holtzclaw Avenue facility, said he lost a nephew to cancer and Austin Hatcher's work with families fits with Unum.
"Our company is about helping people," he said of the business that employs 2,800 out of its Chattanooga headquarters and more than 11,000 across the company. "When you think about our community, organizations like this are really what makes it tick."
Amy Jo Osborn, the foundation's president and CEO, said Unum's grant will allow the nonprofit to continue to provide children and families with psychosocial care, at no cost.
"The diagnosis of cancer and its long-lasting impacts is extremely stressful and traumatizing for patients and families," she said in a statement.
Unum, which sells voluntary benefits at employers' workplaces such as disability, life, dental and vision insurance, is giving four more checks to entities at other locations to commemorate 175 years since it was chartered in Maine. The total will reach $700,000 for all the gifts, according to the company.
Mergers and acquisitions from 1993 to 1999 combined Chattanooga-based Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co. and insurers Unum, Paul Revere and Colonial Life. The headquarters was moved to Chattanooga in that period.
McKenney said business so far in 2023 is going "really well."
"We're really excited about everything going on with the year, the growth we've seen, taking care of more people," he said.
The company is coming off a record 2022 financially, but McKenney declined to say if this year will repeat, noting quarterly earnings are slated for release in about a week.
"Stay tuned for that," he said.
Last year saw Unum revenues climb to a record $12 billion, with earnings hitting $1.3 billion, said McKenney, the 54-year-old CEO who took the company's helm in 2015.
(READ MORE: Unum has record year in 2022)
Unum's stock price earlier this month topped $50 per share consistently for the first time in about five years.
"We don't focus too much on that," McKenney said. "We stay focused on making sure we're growing the company and protecting more people."
He said Unum, with a $50 billion investment portfolio, has been in a favorable environment with higher interest rates along with low unemployment and "a good economy."
"We've got to attribute a lot to our team," McKenney added.
According to the foundation, childhood cancer patients are at an increased risk of late-effect neurocognitive deficits as a result of treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation.
This can include a decline in intelligence quotient, academic skills and career attainment later in life, the foundation said. Since childhood cancer survival rates are at nearly 90%, the number of children experiencing lifelong impacts also grows each year, according to Austin Hatcher.
Families of the foundation are provided with services such as mental and behavioral health therapy, occupational therapy, art and music therapy, educational support, grief groups, family programs and more, the foundation said, with services funded solely by the donations of supporters.
Since inception, the foundation has provided more than $24 million in therapeutic services to families facing childhood cancer, it said.
In 2019, the foundation agreed to anchor the commercial part of a planned $40 million redevelopment of a former manufacturing site near downtown at 1601 Holtzclaw Ave.
"It's a pretty good deal for us and pretty good for them," said Nashville developer Michael Kenner, who bought the former Rock-Tenn facility, at the time.
Contact Mike Pare at [email protected] or 423-757-6318.