The secret of Bryce Kumka’s success could be seen as hands-on knowledge of his clients’ needs… or maybe make that feet-on knowledge. Says the property and construction specialist: “I ruin a lot of shoes. Every year I ruin a lot of shoes.”
It’s something in which the Partner and Senior Account Executive for Commercial Insurance of Rogers Insurance Ltd. takes a lot of pride.
“One of the key parts of my practice and my reputation in the insurance business is that I have physically walked every building that we insure; most of them since they were holes in the ground -- or bare pieces of ground.”
It ties in nicely with some words of advice that older, wiser broker Rod Finlayson gave Kumka at the tender age of 19: ‘Don’t try to insure stuff that you don’t understand.’
So it is a given that the Fort McMurray-based Kumka understands the sites he’s insured from the ground up: “I’m highly involved in the construction process.”
And then later, when a claim is being made “I don’t have a problem attending the claims locations and talking with the customers and understanding the extent of the damage. I think that really helps later on in the process.”
As ever, relationships are the name of the game.
“We don’t have a large client base numbers wise but we have a large volume of business so we have really good relationships with our clients.”
It is an approach that leaves him well-positioned to address the needs of a client base experiencing the pain of a resource downturn.
“Our clients are being asked to reduce their costs so we’re looking for innovative ways to do that.”
