Brokers in Ontario are faced with a confluence of challenges in properly explaining auto reform changes to clients, according to Luc Ouellet, founder and president of Broker Intelligence.

Talking to Insurance Business, Ouellet said that the province's brokers are running into a problem that brokers in Quebec and other parts of Canada rarely face: no prior exposure to the coverage in question, and no established habit of auditing their own client calls.

Accident and benefit coverages are something brokers in other provinces have long been used to discussing, Ouellet said, but that wasn't the case in Ontario before the reform that came into force in July.

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"Brokers know accident benefits. What's new is the conversation. When coverage that was previously included becomes optional, the broker has to do more than explain what changed, they have to help the client understand what that choice could mean for them," he said.

That unfamiliarity is compounding a separate, longer-standing gap, Ouellet said: outside Quebec, where the Autorité des marchés financiers closely audits broker conduct, few brokerages have a practice of reviewing their own client calls at all. "In Quebec, call auditing has become a fairly established practice in many brokerages. What we're seeing elsewhere is a more uneven level of adoption. That matters, because if you don't review conversations, it's difficult to know how consistently these changes are being explained," he said.

The result, Ouellet said, is a conversation many brokers are still building the confidence to lead. "This isn't an easy conversation. There's a lot to explain, and brokers are still developing the language and confidence to lead it effectively. The risk is that the conversation becomes reactive, driven by the client's questions rather than by a structured coverage review," he said.

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Part of the difficulty, he said, is that a fully informed conversation isn't necessarily rewarded in the moment. Direct insurers can quote a lower premium by simply not raising accident and benefit coverage unless asked, Ouellet said, and price-sensitive customers may not notice the difference until a claim is filed. "Price matters enormously in insurance. A difference of three, four or five per cent can influence a client's decision. The risk is that a lower premium feels like a better deal when the client may actually be choosing less protection," he said.

At the center of the issue, Ouellet said, is a basic disclosure gap: telling a customer a coverage option exists isn't the same as confirming they understood what it means. "There's an important difference between informing a client and making sure they understand. A broker can explain every option correctly and still leave the client unclear about what they're giving up. The conversation has to confirm understanding, not simply deliver information," he said. Ouellet framed the underlying question brokerages now need to be able to answer as whether a broker actually walked a client through the accident and benefit changes, explained what those changes mean in practice, and confirmed who is and isn't covered as a result.

Ouellet also pointed to a tension between how brokers are compensated and the standard they're actually held to. "The brokerage has an important responsibility to provide the right tools, training and oversight. But every broker is also a licensed professional with individual regulatory and ethical obligations. Responsibility exists at both levels," he said. Brokers tend to view these conversations through a commission lens rather than a licensing one, he said, even though it's the licensing obligation, not the commission structure, that ultimately governs what they're required to disclose.

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Broker Intelligence built a tool specifically to help brokerage principals see whether these conversations are actually happening, adapting a subset of the questions from its existing errors-and-omissions auditing product. The Ontario-specific version checks calls for a handful of markers, Ouellet said: whether the broker explicitly mentioned the accident and benefit changes, explained their impact, and stated who is covered. Results are compiled into a weekly report for broker principals or brokerage management, rather than assessed call by call.

Ouellet said the company's next step is building out conversation guides and training material to help brokers navigate what he described as a genuinely difficult topic for many of them. "There can be a real tension for brokers. You want to take the time to explain the options properly, but you also know the client may be comparing your quote with a lower-priced alternative. That's precisely where the value of advice has to outweigh the temptation to compete on price alone," he said.

Ultimately, Ouellet framed the issue as coming back to what brokers are meant to offer that a direct-to-consumer channel doesn't. "The broker's value isn't simply finding a price, it's helping the client make an informed decision about their protection. And ultimately, the true value of that advice becomes clear when the client has a claim," he said.