The time has come for the unveiling of Insurance Business Canada’s Five-Star Carriers list for 2020, which uses the feedback of insurance brokers to determinehow well carriers are meeting expectations across a broad range of criteria.
Among the carriers selected for 2020, you’ll find Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group (CMIG), whose leadership sees the recognition as an “absolute honour,” and a tribute to the company’s surveying of its brokers.
“We’ve been very active in focusing on the direct feedback that we’ve received from our broker partners,” said Enrico Mastrangeli(pictured), CMIG’s vice president of distribution and member innovation.“We’ve received some great feedback from our brokers, and we’ve invested significant efforts in targeting both low-hanging fruit, as well as some core fundamental areas that are vital to the healthy engagement of our broker partners.”
The core component of how CMIG stands out to brokers is in its personal relationships with themand how it’s using technology to enhance those relationships further. As a result, brokers are more comfortable having open and candid dialogue with core touch points within the organization, such as frontline underwriters, claims adjusters, and every level of leadership within the firm, from frontline supervisors all the way to the CEO, explained Mastrangeli.
Moreover, CMIGhas made significant progress in its technological transformation, garnering rave reviews from brokers along the way. The company rolled out its technology tool,accompanied by its Commonwell Concierge Service, which is a hands-on approach to help take each brokerage through the tool one at a time. The success of this strategy has been proven in brokers’ strong uptake of the technology.
On the underwriting front, the carrier has demonstrated its expertise and understanding of the intricacies of rural and sub-rural living,and its leaders have also enhanced the company’s approach to portfolio-based underwriting.
“One of the key things in the dialogue between the underwriter and broker is that if there is a risk that we’re not able to insure, we’re very thorough in explaining the reasonings behind it that goes beyond the underwriting manual,” said Mastrangeli. “We want to ensure that there’s understanding behind why a declination is warranted in certain cases.”
One of the company’s proudest moments in underwriting this year has been the improvement of its turnaround time for brokers, even as the majority of its staff has transitioned to work from home. In fact, CMIG has received feedback that it is far exceeding the market in that turnaround time.
On the claims side, CMIG has long been known for its member- and broker-centric approach to claims adjudication, and brokers have come to appreciate the company’s fairness in this process. In the meantime, CMIG has layered in a more robust focus on process efficiencies,as well as speed of adjudication.
“Not only do we want our policyholders – and to an extent, our brokers – to experience the care and compassion of our approach at the time of claim, but we’ve also enhanced and continue to enhance the speed in which we can place our insureds back to the time prior to the loss,” said Mastrangeli.
As CMIG looks to the rest of 2020 and beyond, there are a few key items on the team’s checklist left to accomplish. For one, the firm is continuing to focus on enabling connectivity with brokers to increase the ease of doing business with CMIG, in turn allowing brokers to demonstrate the impacts of increased efficiencies to existing members as well as prospective members.
CMIG is also continuing to be an active partner in strategic planning with its brokers, in part by supporting them through succession planning.
“Knowing that a number of our broker partners are getting to the age where they’re looking to transition, we’re there in many ways to help in that succession planning,” said Mastrangeli. “With our enhanced and growing analytics, we’re also able to have more strategic discussions with our brokers on how to profitably grow their business, so we’ve started to externalize our analytics with our brokers, rather than just keeping our analytics behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz.”
Finally, CMIG is growing its marketing capabilities, and while that certainly helps the company internally with its own brand development, explained Mastrangeli, “We’re also looking at building our marketing capabilities to further partner with brokers that need that level of support.”
