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As the managing general agent and program sector continues to thrive, nearly doubling since 2012, according to a Conning report from earlier this year, some MGAs are setting the standard for the rest to follow. In Insurance Business Canada’s ranking of 5-Star MGAs for 2019, Cansure has been recognized yet again, which the MGA’s president says is a validation of the effort that the team puts into the business.
“It’s nice to see a benchmarking versus our peers to know where we’re doing a good job and where we’re maybe falling short from the perspective of our customers,” said Cansure‘s Cameron Copeland. “We have the best of intentions with everything that we do in the business and hope that it leads to adding value for customers, but this is a valuable source of feedback to know if we’re hitting the mark or not.”
The annual report is also a helpful resource for Cansure to share its successes among the broker community and get the MGA back into the fronts of minds. But this recognition doesn’t just happen by accident – the Cansure team has developed key strategies that have helped the company stand out in the marketplace. For one, Cansure occupies a unique position for an MGA, in that it’s a generalist that looks and feels to brokers like a domestic insurance company. That means its products span across commercial lines and specialty personal lines, while its business expertise reaches from small businesses to larger firms with more complex risks.
“We service all of the market segments and all tiers of the market,” explained Copeland. “This enables us to be a one-stop shop experience for brokers, and in order to bring depth and expertise to our major segments, we have what we call our ‘broad-deep’ strategy – we’re broad in that we service all segments and lines of business, and we’re deep in that we have dedicated practice leaders and expertise in our major segments.”
For example, in construction and real estate, which are two of Cansure’s larger practices, as well as in contractors, inland marine, and manufacturing, the MGA has dedicated practice leaders and teams that include underwriters and other experts from across offices.
“They’re constantly working on product innovation, bringing differentiation forward, expertise in underwriting to handle complex risks and complex submissions, and an understanding of the market and the competitive environment to add value for brokers,” said Copeland. “Our underwriters need to see, feel, touch, and think about each risk submission. If there’s some complex aspect to it or some [unique] element to the negotiation or policy structure, the underwriters work closely with the brokers to construct the coverage and place the right coverage at the right terms and conditions.”
Another key strategy in being that one-stop shop is in packaging coverages. Often, brokers may find that liability insurance is difficult to place on a risk, yet Cansure can place that coverage while also wrapping the property quote around it, as well as legal expense insurance and other ancillary coverages, such as crime, E&O, and D&O – quoting all of the other lines of coverage alongside that more difficult line or the line that is being competed upon.
“Some risks are going to be won and lost on the property. Some will be won and lost on the equipment. We can solve those problems and give a one-stop shop package quote for the whole policy,” explained Copeland. “We can issue up to 14 lines of coverage on a single policy, so that the client gets a single policy and the broker has a single billing transaction for all of the property, liability, and specialty coverages.”
To add value when brokers have to actually transact business, the MGA introduced CansureTech back in June, which is an online transaction platform that allows brokers to digitally access a suite of personal and commercial insurance products.
“What’s unique about CansureTech is that it not only acts as a portal for brokers to rate, quote, and bind insurance with Cansure, but we can also white-label the products and put them on the broker’s website so that they can offer ecommerce solutions to their clients who want to do business with them from their home,” said Copeland.
Within CansureTech, Cansure offers personal lines products, commercial lines products, and specialty lines products, while also working to introduce wholesale products on the portal in the near future.
“We’re hoping to provide an insurance marketplace that brokers can just keep minimized on their desktop and whenever they have a need in that space of commercial and personal, they come to the Cansure portal first and it will all feed into one overall accounting relationship, one flow of documents, and building a book with one trusted partner,” added Copeland.
At the end of the insurance transaction comes the claims function and in the 5-Star MGAs survey, brokers were asked to give their feedback on claims support. With Cansure’s in-house claims examining function, the company again differentiates itself from the competition.
“We have 17 people that work as claims examiners, and what that does for us is that Cansure is the point of contact for claims with Cansure, unlike many traditional MGAs who use third party claims administrators or the claims are dealt with by the carrier’s claims examiners. The broker can find themselves shuffled between various carriers and TPAs, and they’re not dealing with the MGA that they bound the policy with,” Copeland told Insurance Business. “At Cansure, brokers deal with the same company for underwriting services and claims services, and we act as that single point of contact.”
This in turn again makes Cansure look and feel to brokers like a domestic insurer, in addition to the fact that Cansure can release its own claims payments, paying claims faster through the month, and offering direct renewal solutions on the total package policy so that brokers can take advantage of direct billing and credit card payments for their clients.
Overall, Cansure’s initiatives are aimed at creating a more efficient, integrated, and seamless workflow that increases quality and speed for brokers and their clients. Looking ahead, a platform like CansureTech will also increase Cansure’s portfolio management capabilities, which will enable the MGA to run the business better and to work more closely with its suppliers, which is a big part of Cansure’s ability to remain stable and scalable for the future.
“We’re also growing the business in the wholesale space, utilizing our expertise and relationships to bring thoughtful solutions forward for brokers; in the middle market space, in our advisory in-house platform, where we’re utilizing our delegated underwriting authority agreements to provide thoughtful service fast; and in the transactional space, to meet a basket of needs online in a rate, quote, and bind environment that spans not only personal and specialty, but also commercial,” said Copeland.
