Amarillo’s Fairly Group is Disrupting the Industry

“The traditional approach to managing risk has been to sell insurance,” says Alex Fairly, president of Amarillo’s Fairly Group, a company that is reshaping how large companies view, and manage, risk.

“But insurance doesn’t really manage risk it simply finances it. So what if we could change how much risk actually costs? What if we could find a way to help our clients fix their problems and have those problems cost less money?” That laser focus on reshaping outcomes, as opposed to paying o bad ones, is what makes the Fairly Group – one of Amarillo’s flagship enterprises Ȃ so unique, and so successful.

And it is why organizations as complex as Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL) choose to do business with Fairly Group, rather than some of the more traditional players in the field.

Fairly points to his work with MLB as a perfect example.

“These athletes like to play, even when get banged up. But the cost of injured players is very high.” 7raditionally, o -season was when players would recuperate and get treated for their injuries. But with them heading home during the o -season, 0/B Clubs had a limited ability to closely monitor their treatment and therapy, which often led to lingering injuries once they returned for the next season.

“Our idea was: could we keep these guys with the team through the o -season, so the Clubs could more proactively help them rehab better? Better support, better facilities, better doctors surrounding them, the best care, so that they could get better more quickly?”

This was the idea that MLB and Fairly’s team came up with more than a decade ago. When we first proposed this, they looked at us and said, “Can we do that?,” recalls Bill Creedon, Fairly Group’s CEO. “But today, 15 years later,” adds Fairly, “every MLB team takes a hands-on, proactive approach to helping their players recover and rehab during the o -season. It became a completely new paradigm about how baseball approaches o -season injuries, because what we focused on was the outcome.”

WHY AMARILLO?

Fairly landed in the city from New Mexico as a college freshman, and knew he was here to stay. +e is adamant that had it not been for the Amarillo spirit – embodied in its people – he would not be savoring the success he has today.

“I came here to go to college at West Texas A&M University, and I never left. Because what we have here are amazing people.”

Adds Creedon, who relocated to Amarillo from Denver, “Every single one of our [120odd] associates is engaged in a way I’ve never seen before.

“They’re engaged in the culture; they’re engaged in delivering something for the client that is the absolute best. They wake up every day and ask: what can we do better?” 7hat o -the-charts engagement has led to an unheard-of zero turnover rate for the company, which attracts people from all over the country to work there. For its part, Fairly Group is committed literally and philosophically to Amarillo’s resurgence.

“This is where we live,” says Fairly. “This is our community. We might do business all over the world – we spend our lives on airplanes – but we come home to Amarillo.”

For Fairly and so many other companies, doing business in Amarillo has been a grand slam.