This article was produced in partnership with SUM Insurance.
Desmond Devoy, of Insurance Business Canada, sat down with Travis Budd, managing director and co-founder of SUM Insurance, and Sandra Lefebvre, assistant vice president, professional liability, SUM Insurance.
What do cannabis producers, pedicurists, nursing homes and even cryptocurrency traders all have in common?
They all need liability insurance, and CGL coverage alone often does not address each insureds’ unique needs and risks.
Bespoke coverage, like professional liability, fills these gaps.
“Being an MGA (Managing General Agent) we have access to a lot of markets. So we’re able to write more challenging classes like blockchain, cryptocurrency and cannabis for example,” said Sandra Lefebvre (pictured left), assistant vice-president, professional liability at SUM Insurance. “We like to focus on niche sectors, business that the many other domestic professional liability insurers might not be able to write.”
For Travis Budd (pictured right), SUM’s managing director and co-founder, their outreach and partnerships go beyond Canada’s borders.
“We’re an MGA, with broad, in-house underwriting authority,” said Budd. “With these generous capacities, we are allowed to provide our clients a very quick decision-making process, which can lead to turning around policies in a day. We also provide access to international markets which our clients wouldn’t otherwise be able to trade with.”
There are indeed different strokes for different folks, but when it comes to insurance, as Canada’s economy has diversified, so too have its insurance needs.
“Individuals are more and more required to have higher qualifications and Canada really sets the standards as being a service-based economy that can provide specialized services internationally,” said Budd. “And if you want to parallel that with insurance, it is that, in the old days, a general liability policy would have covered all these risks. And then, as exposures arising specifically out of these professional services were being identified, CGL insurers realized, ‘Hang on a second. Accountants, doctors and lawyers aren’t the only professionals who require specialized professional liability coverage.’ Professionals and quasi-professionals need their own insurance.”
The diversity of coverage has grown over the years.
“We insure a pedicure society and you would think pedicures, what would be the professional liability there?” Budd asked. “This is how much we now distinguish things in the economy - if you have any sort of heightened knowledge, you are then exposed to an expectancy of a greater level of care. And so, as a general insurer, you wouldn’t want to cover individuals that have that more specialized level of knowledge.”
But he cautioned that there is another need for more specialized professional insurance.
“We are a more litigious economy than in the past as well,” he said
Just as the Chinese use the same character for crisis as they do for opportunity, SUM Insurance has also stepped in where others feared to tread during the pandemic, when COVID-19 exclusions had to be put into policies.
“On the medical malpractice side, we’ve written a lot of senior homes during the pandemic, an area most markets didn’t want to get into,” said Lefebvre.
Budd said that senior home insurance was “a really good example of our purpose in life. We saw that there was a lot of demand for it. Our clients were needing to place these risks. We worked very hard with our long-standing partners and figured out a way to get a policy in their hands that filled the requirements and allowed the business to continue along.”
They are now one of the larger senior home writers in Quebec.
As the economy cools, Budd is seeing it reflected in his business.
“If we lose a renewal, more often than not it’s because they’ve gone out of business,” Budd said. What he is also seeing, as budgets tighten and inflation rises, is that, unless it is required by their industry regulator, errors and omissions coverage, for example, gets dropped, though that is something he cautions against.
“It tends to be one of the lines of insurance (companies) tend to get rid of, if it’s not a requirement for them to keep their license,” said Budd.
“Some professionals still don’t believe that they need professional liability coverage,” said Lefebvre. “So really, it’s the broker’s duty to educate them on why they need the coverage, because any business that offers any kind of professional service to a third party has an exposure.”
Apart from a desire to get outside of the comfort zone, what else sets SUM Insurance apart?
“SUM has a strong reputation, and we also have strong relationships with our markets and our retail brokers,” said Lefebvre. “We’ve been hiring seasoned professionals with a lot of knowledge, and entrepreneurial spirit, so that definitely helps…(We are) marrying deep underwriting competency with high class security and underwriting authority to allow for decision making and being risk underwriters.”
For more information on SUM Insurance, visit: www.suminsurance.ca/home.html
SUM Insurance, a subsidiary of One80 Intermediaries, is a managing general agent serving Canada, with offices in Toronto and Montreal. It was formed in 2011.
