It has been a year and a half since Charles Taylor launched Charles Taylor TPA in the Canadian market. The global loss adjusting giant was responding to requests from clients for wider project management and third-party administration (TPA)-type services, and for “boots on the ground” in Canada that could provide holistic and bespoke solutions for complex commercial insurance programs.
Since then, Charles Taylor has taken a methodical approach to rolling out its TPA offering in Canada, learning from its TPA operations globally, which handles 3.5 million claims per year and is market-leading in terms of developing and adopting technology-based solutions for insurers, while also calling on data & analytics to provide market insights.
“We formalized our Charles Taylor TPA offering in Canada at the end of 2019, and since then we’ve passed some key milestones,” said Robert Paxton (pictured above), vice president of strategy & performance at Charles Taylor Adjusting. “We’ve been doing joint pitches between Charles Taylor Adjusting and Charles Taylor TPA to get across to our clients the variety of services that we can actually provide to them. This is interesting for our clients because over the last 20-years they’ve grown used to thinking of Charles Taylor from an adjusting perspective. But what we’re trying to do is have our adjusting and TPA services work hand in glove, so that we can really create bespoke solutions that take the best from each element and combine them together.”
The successful roll out of Charles Taylor TPA plays into the group’s wider strategy of providing end-to-end claims management solutions for its clients across Canada. The group currently operates out of offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, but is actively looking to expand into new geographic regions where there’s a need for solutions in its core product lines of pollution liability, natural resources, marine, aviation, cyber, and specialty risks.
“Our geographic expansion is going to follow a very methodical approach to ensure that we have alignment with our core values, our core products, and that we’re servicing and providing niche expertise to meet the demands of each region,” said Michael Guy (pictured immediately above), managing director & regional head of Canada at Charles Taylor Adjusting. “That differs across Canada; you’re going to see a different set of risks in different areas based on what drives the economy, the weather conditions, and catastrophic loss in those regions.
“We also want to align our expansion with Charles Taylor’s global service offerings as well. For example, are we able to leverage our global aquaculture program by opening an office in Atlantic Canada? Are we able to build our global agriculture expertise into our offering in the Prairies? Or can we leverage the mining sector that is having positive returns across the world to build out our expansion across Canada? All of that, taken into account with our clients’ needs, has led us to look at servicing additional locations with boots on the ground.”
A core part of Charles Taylor’s growth strategy in Canada is the creation of national practice groups. While this may sound contrary to its “boots on the ground” regional expertise approach, the national practice groups are intended to enhance and expand the solutions offered in each region. The goal, according to Guy, is to leverage Charles Taylor’s expertise and to share knowledge across Canada, North America and Charles Taylor’s global footprint.
“We’ve created national practice groups to assist our clients that might have losses across the country,” said Paxton. “For example, we had a client that had losses across Canada in a particular specialty line. They were dealing with several different independent adjusting (IA) firms, which meant that the quality of the adjusting was different in different areas, and it was just a lot of work for the client to keep on top of.
“What we were able to do through our environmental national practice group, was offer this client adjusters across the country, with persistent quality, and also have the team lead be a single point of contact for them. That essentially cut down work for the client, they didn’t have to liaise with a whole bunch of different IA firms, they could reduce costs, and ensure consistent quality of adjusting across the country. That’s just one example of the philosophy behind having national practice groups.”
Charles Taylor’s strategy in Canada revolves around the idea of partnership and being a go-to market for all things large and complex loss-related. They’ve built out their service offering with the introduction of Charles Taylor TPA, they’re expanding geographically while also giving clients access to centralized resources, and they’re always developing and deploying new technology.
“The whole purpose of this is for us to add value to the market, to share our expertise and have an open dialogue with the market about what is interesting to them and what are some of the sticking points that we can help them with,” Paxton told Insurance Business. “Partnership is part of the DNA of Charles Taylor. It’s been there from our very first day in operation, and it remains a key driver for us in Canada and around the world.”
