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Developments in the insurance marketplace might be coming at a rapid pace, but there are still a few constants in the industry. For one, Wynward Insurance Group has maintained its support of the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada’s (IBAC) Broker Identity Program (BIP) at the Full Partner level for 2019.
This recommitment reflects the commercial insurer’s perspectives on the role of the broker, which remains a vital touchpoint in the insurance transaction.
“Wynward is a very strong supporter of the great work that [IBAC’s CEO] Peter Braid and his team are doing at IBAC, and we believe in the broker channel because we believe that the broker adds value to the customer, and it adds value to the industry to have an intermediary that can offer customers choice, competitive pricing, and independent advice,” said Darryl Levy (pictured), president and CEO of Wynward.
With the company’s focus on specialty commercial lines, the broker and their expertise becomes even more critical.
“In many cases, our brokers are entrepreneurs or larger brokers, or some of the largest brokerages in the world that operate in Canada. They understand what it’s like to run a business, especially our brokers who are entrepreneurs that built up successful businesses,” explained Levy. “Who best for us to partner with as a commercial insurer than other businesses and other entrepreneurs to serve our collective customers? That’s why we really believe in the Broker Identity Program that advises Canadians on the value of the broker channel.”
Some of the new risk classes for which Wynward offers solutions include cannabis and cyber. With these emerging exposures, building up expertise across the insurance spectrum is necessary to provide the best advice for clients.
“There aren’t a lot of new risk classes that come around in a 100-year-old industry, so when they do, you want to really understand them and understand the customer requirements, and understand if you can build the product that can serve the customer’s need and at the same time, protect your capital as an insurer and leverage the broker’s expertise in serving that specialty market,” explained Levy. “We’ve done that as a commercial insurer, and there’s more to come, especially in the cyber space because that’s quite an evolving sector, not just from a business standpoint, but from a loss mitigation standpoint.”
Meanwhile, as the personal auto insurance space goes through fundamental changes, with cars getting safer and autonomous vehicles becoming more common on the roads, Levy predicts that there will be erosion in the revenue accrued by brokers in personal auto because premiums will eventually go down. That means they’ll have to turn to the commercial auto space.
“As that diminishes over time, in terms of the overall percent of revenue for our broker partners, the ones who have really understood this and have become commercial insurance specialists will prosper because that’s the growing part of the Canadian economy, that’s the growing part of the insurance space in Canada, and it fits nicely into Wynward as a commercial insurance specialist,” Levy told Insurance Business.
Today, Wynward counts over 400 broker groups, with just under 700 locations across the country, as its partners, and with a strong belief in the marketplace’s moves towards commercial specializations, the brokers that Wynward works with are along for the ride.
“These are partners that really understand commercial, and they understand that the future is even more about commercial insurance,” said Levy.
