After almost three decades working for the family business, Julia Marshall (pictured) is starting a new chapter in her insurance career. In early September, Strathmore-based Gold Key Insurance and Gold Key Registry announced that it will be joining forces with Sharp Insurance in Calgary, with Marshall, president of Gold Key, coming on as the brokerage’s new vice president of government relations.
“I wanted to challenge myself,” said Marshall. “Right now with a small business, you wear every hat – so HR, accounting, broker – and I found that in the last five years sitting on the boards that I sit on, that was something that I had a real passion for. This allows me to expand on that and not be as pulled in many directions when I do it.”
Marshall’s association roles have kept her busy. She was previously the president of the Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta, and has been a director for the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC) for a year now, with her second year kicking off in a few days. She is also the VP of finance for the Association of Alberta Registry Agents.
“When you’re on a provincial board, you’re representing your members and when you’re on a national board, it’s for the good of your national membership as opposed to just the province, so it’s a larger capacity,” she explained. “On the radar is getting our province and the rest of the provinces across Canada to accept digital pink cards. Our registries across Alberta accept digital pink cards, but our law enforcement can’t seem to approve it.”
For the next six months, Marshall will also be figuring out her top list of priorities in the new role, and focusing on transitioning her office into the new partnership, with a lot of attention on technology.
“Within the brokerage, bringing in efficiencies so that my brokers can actually be salespeople as opposed to data entry on the computer,” listed Marshall. “There’s still always going to be that component, but insurers have introduced all their new portals and we don’t have someone in our office that does processing, so that will be an efficiency that we see hopefully in the near future.”
Getting more clients to use the brokerage’s mobile app is another goal as the business integrates with Sharp Insurance.
“We have a good reach to our existing clients, and I want to expand on that,” explained Marshall. “I want to make sure that we’re using it properly and that as many of our clients are signed up that eventually we can send push notifications if there is a state of emergency or a new coverage that’s available.”
