A brokerage without a location, signing clients without ever meeting them. Is this the future of insurance?
Greg Raymond of InsuranceHero.ca started the business back in 2011, and today is the first broker to have won the Innovator of the Year award, presented at the recent Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario’s annual convention.
“I am extremely pleased, I really wasn’t expecting it,” Raymond told Insurance Business. “Just being named a finalist was great; but being a recipient was outstanding.”
The business can be best described as a network of brokers, who can reach out to clients anywhere – so long as there is an internet connection or a phone.
“The way the office is set up, it is 100 per cent online or over the phone,” says Raymond. “We don’t have an actual office that you can walk into.”
And he is quick to point out that InsuranceHero.ca carries the same level of expertise that any brokerage has.
“Our model is not to be a call centre,” he says. “We offer the same level of care and advice that a traditional broker would or does, except we offer it through different ways of communication. And clients are responding very well to it.”
But is Raymond’s business model the way insurance will one day be?
“The concept of a mortar and bricks office is disappearing,” he says. “As more and more consumers are gravitating to online for their insurance searches; we are just capitalizing on that. And I think in the coming years, it is only going to grow.” (continued.)
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As for the shrinking market share for brokers – estimated by some to be decreasing at a rate of one per cent annually – that can be stopped by utilizing technology.
“Spending time on innovation; and instead of working in the business, you are working on the business, so that you can secure your position for the future,” says Raymond. “I think that any insurance provider that doesn’t leverage technology will certainly be replaced by providers that do leverage technology and make good use of it.”
And it is the expertise and ‘value-add’ that brokers can use to their advantage when going toe-to-toe with the big directs, Raymond points out.
“It is hard at times to compete with the big directs, as they are commoditizing the product,” he admits. “But there are still a lot of ways that we as brokers can offer value.”
