Headquarters: Calgary, AB
Year founded: 2009
Total number of offices: 1
Number of employees: 60
Head leadership: Sherif Gemayel, president and Cathy Lip, vice president of personal lines
Website: www.sharpinsurance.ca
What is your brokerages’ top area of business?
At Sharp Insurance, we specialize in personal lines insurance.
What makes your brokerage unique?
From our inception, we have always gone against the typical norm of the industry. We have worked really hard to carve out our identity and service positioning that centres on innovation and technology. Whether it was through developing our mobile app services, or going completely digital on an internal level, or through our investment on the latest digital marketing trends, we have always seen ourselves as forward-thinking, optimistic and innovative.
In what areas of business has your brokerage experienced recent growth?
We have continued to see growth in our personal lines book of business, and we have recently been growing our commercial lines as well. We are also still growing as a brokerage, and are happy to say we are still actively hiring new brokers regularly.
What has been a proud accomplishment for your brokerage and why?
The proudest accomplishment for us has to be our technology. For the past year, through our work with Sharp Mobile, we have made amazing updates to our digital customer service tools offering. We have over 60% of our clients signed up on our app, which is cutting down on our phone volumes and helping us to grow. We also released an internal software that helps us manage website, online and phone leads, making us more efficient, and allowing us to provide a whole new level of customer service.
What challenges did your brokerage experience last year and how did your team overcome them?
Our biggest challenge moving into 2016 was, of course, the state of the Albertan economy. We prepared and braced ourselves for a tough year. We were also very proactive in trying to mitigate the impact the economy would have on us. We did this through actively cross-selling, working on our retention numbers, and promoting client loyalty. It was a tough year for us, and a lot of hard work went in to it, but it was worth it in the end as we continued to see growth.
What are your brokerage’s plans for 2017?
We are very excited for 2017, as we have a lot of exciting new projects that will be introduced. The new programs we will be launching within the next year will be unprecedented in the industry. We are expected to see strong growth through 2017, and we’re hoping it will be our best year yet.
What five factors have contributed to your brokerage’s success?
