Bonnie Kluthe (pictured) got her break in insurance when she moved to Toronto in 1987 and found work as a claims assistant for the international brokerage Johnson Higgins Willis Faber. At the time, the city was booming with manufacturing, and she worked on some very large retail and manufacturing accounts.
After nine years of claims work for a handful of insurance companies, it was time to try something new, so Kluthe moved into the role of agent for the Alberta Motor Association (AMA) before she stumbled upon a connection to agriculture that redirected her career path.
“I worked in several of the Edmonton offices and AMA signed up to do the Farm Family Awards in conjunction with the Farm Show in March,” said Kluthe. “At one of the shows, I took the farm underwriting department around, and explained all the equipment and what the equipment did. Once they saw I understood agriculture, they asked me to be a field underwriter with Northern Alberta as my territory writing farm business.”
Today, Kluthe is the president of AgPro Insurance in Alberta. She spoke to Insurance Business about how she landed the position, her mentors along the way, and the changes in agriculture happening right now.
Tell us about your career trajectory. How did you end up in the insurance business and president of AgPro Insurance Brokers?
From AMA I went to a large Edmonton brokerage in marketing, which I loved, and made many connections with the companies during this time and I eventually ended up at CFI Insurance where I was the senior underwriter on very large agricultural risks doing subscriptions – the nice thing was I was given the opportunity to underwrite anything and everything agriculture.
While at CFI, I placed a lot of business with the Lombard (Northbridge) Agribusiness unit out of Cambridge, Ontario and when the agribusiness manager from Lombard (Northbridge) went to Western General (Economical) as the division VP, he offered me the position of the western region team leader in Edmonton, which I accepted.
This was the best career decision I’ve ever made – I learned about leadership, HR and mentorship. I built a team from two (a lady in Calgary and me) and my team built the Western Canadian book from $7 million to $43 million in six years. It was a crazy time and the workload was insanely heavy. Managing people under this type of growth was very difficult. By the end of 2010 we were getting 160 broker bound new business a month, which we had to manually code to get into the system.
I met one of my mentors, Pam Derksen, who took on the role of division vice president after the person who hired me left. She has made a huge impact on my career and I really learned so much from her. While in my role at Economical (Western General) I met Gail Tory, the CEO of McLean & Shaw, who had started AgPro with a couple of other business partners. Gail and I really got along and have similar philosophies, so one day she asked me if I would want to come over as president at AgPro with some ownership.
I was stunned as it really is the opportunity of a lifetime and I couldn’t say no. So as much as I loved what I did at Western General, I left and came over to AgPro, which is basically a start-up and has taken a lot of work and time to start growing. I believe that we have to get out of our comfort zone and take some risks in life, and for me this was the one. This chance would’ve been the one I always wondered about “what if” if I wouldn’t have taken the position, and I believe that we have one life to live, so we need to really look at opportunities and weigh our options. So now that I’m here, we’ve decided to go one step further and put together an Agricultural MGA. I’ve gotten a coverholder agreement and built a great livestock herd product with Argo Global, a Lloyd’s of London syndicate, and am working on many other products with Lloyd’s and domestic markets.
When you look back at your career, what would you say are your proudest accomplishments?
I’m really proud that I completed my FCIP and CRM – the education was so key to everything I’ve had the opportunity to do with my career.
Working at Economical/Western General and building the Farm Underwriting team in Edmonton and building the book of business as we did – it was a crazy time and so much work, but really rewarding.
The broker relationships that I built while at Economical with brokers across Western Canada – I really enjoyed working with the brokers.
Getting our coverholder agreement with Lloyd’s – it was a pile of work, but again, I learned so much.
I believe that hard work does have its rewards and I’ve worked very hard and learned as much as I could at each and every position I’ve had over the years, which has really served me well now.
What are the challenges of running a brokerage?
I’m at a different level than other brokers as we’re basically a start-up, so I’ve had to make some hard decisions as to what we can afford with regards to advertising, sponsorship, staffing.
Trying to find people – as I’m sure everyone has this challenge, but with a niche such as agriculture, it’s even more difficult.
Training, which really could fit under time management. While the time is so worthwhile, finding the time to do it properly is another thing.
Time management, as I’m sure everyone will attest to – the days aren’t long enough sometimes. There is so much to do and so little time to do it.
What are the major developments in the Canadian agricultural sector that have affected your work in recent years?
Agriculture and insurance are actually fairly parallel in many ways – we’re both seeing a ‘digital revolution’ where there is rapid advancements in technology and the landscape of what both industries are facing will be dramatically different in 10 years (if it even takes that long!).
Agriculture is also seeing many mergers and acquisitions, where there are fewer but larger farms and they’re getting to be more commercially focused. The mixed mom-and-pop farming operations are fewer and further between. Agriculture is going the way of the specialist as well.
Farm ‘kids’ are leaving the farm, getting educated (university, college or trades) and coming back to the farm and bringing their business knowledge and applying it to the farm, which is changing how farmers think about their business. The average age of a farmer in Canada is 58, so once this generation starts retiring or stepping back, there is going to be a further shift in philosophy.
We are also seeing more women farm entrepreneurs, which is really exciting, and this is on the upwards trend, so the face of farming in the future is going to be younger with more women leading the operations instead of taking a “backseat” role. Very exciting times!
I think we’re going to see a shift in how we source our food. There is only so much land in the world and the population will be over 10 billion shortly [and] farmers have to feed the world. How is this going to be done? I think there will be some very innovative and creative ways this will be done on a global level.
How does AgPro differentiate itself from competitors?
We don’t dabble in agriculture – it is our passion! We are very serious about farmers’ risk and how we can alleviate that risk for them.
We really feel that the agriculture sector is underserved right now and we want to ensure any gaps are filled for clients. What the mainstream insurers are offering right now isn’t good enough and we are working with domestic and Lloyd’s markets to fill those gaps.
We also understand the risks as we live on farms or grew up on farms and understand the work the farmers do. As an example I am married to a grain farmer north west of Edmonton [and] we raised our children on the farm. Our kids drive farm equipment, did chores – we had hogs until 2005 and beef cattle until 2010. We did 4H and Pony Club.
As I said above, we have launched the first product for our MGA, AgPro Underwriting Solutions, as we feel we can help the agricultural sector even more if we share the products we’re developing with other brokers to support our agricultural industry and the risks they take every day.
If you weren’t working in the insurance space, what would you be doing right now?
You know I don’t think about this often as I don’t have time, but there was a time before insurance I really wanted to be an archaeologist and if insurance wouldn’t have chosen me, I would be out in Egypt or Mexico somewhere looking for artefacts. I find it so fascinating and amazing what those civilizations did hundreds or thousands of years ago, and do a fair amount of reading and research on the Aztecs, the Ancient Egyptians and the Knights Templar.
