Infrastructure: Doing Business in Kansas City

Plenty of tools are available to help business owners succeed.

Kansas City’s physical attributes for corporate success are well-known, but what about the infrastructure of business itself? If you’re doing business in this region, here are a few tools you might need to help your business grow.

Commercial Banking

The extended branches of the Kemper family still influence the two largest locally based banks—Commerce Bank and UMB Bank. Both have national reputations for sound banking practices that anchor a region described by Forbes magazine as American banking’s “Zone of Sanity.” National giant Bank of America also has a double-digit market share, and a relatively new player in town, Boston-based National Bank Holdings, controls nearly as much in Bank Midwest and Hillcrest Bank.
U.S. Bank casts a significant shadow, but other prominent players include Arvest, Bank of Kansas City,
Capitol Federal Savings Bank, Country Club Bank and Metcalf Bank. They’re part of a banking roster of more than 155 players deep in the Kansas City MSA.

Legal Services

Every year, Ingram’s collaborates with Best Lawyers in America to produce a comprehensive list of peer-selected lawyers who are tops in their practice areas—hundreds of them, specializing in business formulation, business legal defense, antitrust and bankruptcy law, bet-the-company litigation, real-estate law and many, many more. Shook, Hardy & Bacon is the largest locally owned on the list of the 100 largest U.S. firms; two St. Louis-based heavyweights, Bryan Cave and Husch Blackwell, also made that list. The merger that created Kansas City’s Polsinelli Shughart should produce another Top 100 firm. Two others based here are Stinson Morrison Hecker and Lathrop & Gage, but the Best Lawyers list is packed with top-flight legal talent from smaller firms, as well.

Insurance

Locally based Lockton Companies is the world’s largest privately owned insurance brokerage. But plenty of other firms operating nationally have a presence here, too, including Marsh & McClennan, Aon Corp., Willis of Greater Kansas, as well as such regional players as Holmes Murphy & Associates and IMA Financial Group. The dominant figure in health insurance is 1-million-member Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, but the Blues get plenty of competition from Aetna Health, Cigna Healthcare of Kansas/Missouri, Coventry Health, United Healthcare, among others.

Continuing Education

Regional public institutions include the University of Kansas in Lawrence (and its Edwards Campus in Overland Park) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, with its Bloch School of Management. The University of Missouri in Columbia to the east and Kansas State University to the west are within easy reach, and Pittsburg State University also courses here. Private programs based here include the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences and Baker, Benedictine, Ottawa, Park and Rockhurst universities. The area also has branch campuses or class offerings from Columbia College, Friends University, Washington University’s Olin School of Business. Metropolitan Community College in Missouri and Johson County and Kansas City Kansas Community Colleges also offer various work-force training programs.

Entrepreneurial Support

The world’s leading foundation formed to support entrepreneurship is the Kauffman Foundation, with multiple programs to educate entrepreneurs. Supplementing that are the Entrepreneurial Exchange and the Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program, plus annual events like the InvestMidwest venture capital forum, the Think Big Kansas City Conference and Startup Weekend Kansas City, for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Other Support

The area also boasts well-established staffing agencies drawing on highly specialized workers in information technology, health care and accounting, and national-level players and niche agencies in advertising and marketing, and business consultancies offering administrative support in everything from human resources to payroll processing.

Combined, those resources mean that when you do business in Kansas City, you don’t have to do it alone.