Jonathan Hines doesn’t believe in just quoting clients – in fact, he finds the process to be downright lazy. “In our market and in most markets that we’re aware of, it seems that clients are just used to being quoted. Someone will call them up and try to get their information… and from our perspective, that just really wastes a lot of the client’s time, and it doesn’t provide them with the value that they need,” he says.
“In our mid-market and large market divisions we call ourselves risk and insurance advisors, mainly because we’re looking well beyond insurance policies and what’s available to the client,” he adds. “What we’re really trying to do is give our independent clients access to risk management advisory services that they may not have in house.”
It’s perhaps this drive to go beyond the typical client experience that has propelled Hines to the top; with just 10 years under his belt in the industry, he has already made partner at Maritime-region brokerage Wilson Insurance Ltd., and has been instrumental in their expansion into the Moncton market, as well as their original New Brunswick location.
“It’s been exciting to grow the mid-market to large market portion of our business; it really starts to focus on commercial insurance and employee benefits and risk management.”
Hines, who comes from a finance background, tends to take a behind-the-scenes role in addition to being a commercial producer, doing much of the technical analysis for insurance placements. “A good chunk of what I do, whether it’s a new business opportunity or current account, is insurance policy analysis and understanding what the scope of the actual policy is and whether it adequately covers the client’s exposures or not,” he says.
Like many promising young insurance professionals, Hines didn’t start off with the intention of joining the industry; he caught wind of the opportunities insurance provides while completing his CRM at the University of Toronto. “It was brought to my attention that in the insurance business there was a vacuum of young people in the business, that the workforce was aging and that there was a lot of opportunity - so I decided to give it a try.”
He says universities can do a better job of position insurance to be a viable option for students, calling it a “very well-kept secret”.
“It’s a great career students’ move for anyone who is interested in the financial services industry and it’s very rewarding career, there’s a lot of upward mobility,” he says. “That’s something that doesn’t really hit the radar for a lot of people.”
