There were many top performers recognized as finalists and winners during the Insurance Business Awards this year. Among the leaders who took home prizes for making a difference in the Canadian insurance industry was Sheri Walters (pictured), the Gold Winner of the Cansure Award for Insurance Broker of the Year, and SVP, strategy development leader - national broking at Aon Canada.
“It feels incredible [to win],” she told Insurance Business. “I’m in insurance because I chose insurance. I love reading, learning, fixing things, and dealing with people, and I’m not in the industry to win awards, but to be recognized, especially by my peers ... I’m quite humbled and I feel like it’s the pinnacle of my career.”
The recognition comes at a unique time in Walters’ career – and the careers of so many insurance professionals – as COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on societies around the world, while a hard market is putting pressure on many lines of business. Walters has persevered amid this crisis, but she’s also had days when she’s looked back to 9/11, shortly after she started in the industry, and has had to rely on her experience to tell herself, ‘It’s going to be OK and things will get better.’ At the same time, the broker leader is using her experiences to mentor others and lift them up, knowing that they’ll be stronger, smarter, and more tenacious professionals on the other side of these challenges.
“For me, [the award] brings [my career] to a full circle moment and tells me that for the last 20-some years … it was worth it,” noted Walters.
The broker launched her career in insurance back in 1996, when she was a college student and applied for a summer job as a receptionist at an insurance company. The firm didn’t hire her for that role, but they did offer her a job as an underwriting assistant full-time, so Walters made the decision to drop out of school and finished her education via an insurance program at night school, while working for the company.
“The reason I chose insurance is because I saw opportunities. I wanted a business degree and I wanted to further my education, and I saw this opportunity before me at the insurance company,” she explained.
Initially, Walters worked for an insurer, and then moved over to a small brokerage. She was familiar with Aon Reed Stenhouse at the time and knew that would be the best broker to work for in Canada, as it was filled with opportunities to learn and advance her career. She set her sights on eventually joining the company and fulfilled that goal in 1998. After 10 years at Aon as an account executive, she took some time off to raise her family and returned in 2015 as a senior broker.
At the global brokerage, she’s had the chance to flex her inquisitive mind and continue to fix problems by finding insurance solutions for her clients. When she sees a coverage that she placed being applied in a claim, she wants it to work and to show her clients that she was on their side and knew what she was doing. To do her best work, Walters has kept her finger on the pulse of the many changes in the insurance marketplace.
“A great example right now is through COVID. There are many policies that have exclusions and there are some that don’t,” said Walters. “Every day I get up, I’m watching the news and the courts, and I’m trying to figure out how coverage may be applied or not so that I can make sure my clients understand what they’re buying and how they’ll be protected, so that they can sleep at night.”
Walters has seen many of her public sector and construction clients impacted, since the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns have resulted in unique financial pressures for these industries.
“When you have a lack of funding and lack of income coming in, you can’t renovate buildings and you can’t give provide funding for services that were there before,” Walters said. “We have a lot of buildings that are vacant right now, which is a risk, and, when they reopen again, that will be another added risk.”
Walters sees brokers providing critical services amid this challenging environment, thanks to their ability to offer perspectives on a diverse set of coverage options. In fact, she told Insurance Business, the role of the broker is never more important than when clients experience catastrophes like this one.
“That’s when the insurance broker shines because we can provide options,” she said. “We owe it to our clients as an industry to provide options for coverages, for deductible, for rates, and we need to help them navigate and support them during these challenging times.”
Being a broker at Aon has been especially beneficial during this time because the global brokerage doesn’t just offer clients products – it also offers them services and expertise from teams focused on risk control, claims, legal issues, and data and analytics.
“I utilize all of those tools to help change insurer behaviour,” explained Walters. “Rather than them saying, ‘We’re giving a 30% increase to everyone across the board,’ I’ve helped them to think differently by giving them risk control information, and data and analytics, and asking them to reconsider their stance – and it’s working.”
