Brokers need to stop stealing business from each other and start stealing it from competing distribution channels, the CEO of the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO) said in a meeting in Toronto on January 24.
“The broker distribution channel needs to focus on new business,” IBAO CEO Randy Carroll said at Cookson Walker’s 2013 P&C Crystal Ball event in Toronto on January 24. “The new business needs to be new to the channel.”
Brokers currently have an overall market share of 62%, but this number has been dropping by half a percentage point per year over the past 22 years, Carroll said. It is therefore important for brokers to start stealing business from competing channels such as direct writers and financial institutions.
Thus far, however, brokers seem to be stealing more business from each other than they are from other channels. On the one hand, this dynamic reflects consumers’ loyalty to the broker channel. “If they are unhappy with what they are getting from their current broker, most of the time they go to another broker,” Carroll observed.
But brokers need to “take a hard look at where their new business is coming from,” said Carroll.
“We need to increase the amount of activity from other sources, from other than the brokers,” he said. “That’s not taking away [business] from [our competitors]. Ultimately, it comes from among ourselves.”
