Elite brokers must find 'unfair advantage' in tough marketplace

Transparency is an 'opportunity,' not a challenge

Elite brokers must find 'unfair advantage' in tough marketplace

Insurance News

By Bethan Moorcraft

In what has traditionally been a broker-driven insurance market, Canadian brokers are always looking for ways to differentiate themselves. They’re fighting to gain a clear advantage over their peers, while also beating away competition from direct-to-consumer start-ups, insurtechs, and digitizing carriers.

It’s a constant challenge to come out on top, but the good news is, lots of Canadian brokers are hitting the mark. One such success story is Dave Watson, founder and president of WFS Wealth and Financial Strategies, Inc. and honouree on Insurance Business Canada’s Elite Brokers 2019 list.

Elite status, for Watson, is all about creating and maintaining “an unfair advantage” over the competition. He told Insurance Business: “At WFS Advisory, we’ve come up with the adage that in order to build our business and be an elite broker, we have to build an unfair advantage over our competitors. We must have something that’s a differentiator between us and everybody else, and that has to be something that isn’t easy to duplicate so that it actually gives us an unfair advantage.”

Watson’s strategy is to focus on advocacy - but not just the average advocacy that’s expected from brokers. Rather, the team at WFS Advisory are striving to offer verified advocacy. To achieve that, they’re collaborating with a tax accounting firm to prepare a report of all of their recommendations, effectively signing off that what they’re doing is accurate, thorough, and audited by an individual accounting firm.

“It’s a verification that our advice is sound,” explained Watson. “I think it’s necessary at the top end of the market. It underpins company compliance, and it gives us a really strong position in terms of client confidence because it shows we have their best interests in mind and we’re striving to find the best solutions for their problems.”

Another thing this collaboration helps with is transparency. Greater demand for transparency is one of the big changes in the marketplace, according to Watson. Rather than seeing transparency as a challenge, the WFS Advisory team is “trying to turn it into an opportunity” by highlighting the fact that they have a competitive fee structure and their compliance is on point.

The financial services advisory firm is also trying to promote itself as a multi-line solutions provider. Watson commented: “We like to represent the client on different levels of their needs, from employee benefits, to investments, to insurance, really across the board. We’re trying to do a better job of cross-pollinating our services so that we’re a more holistic partner to our clients. They can come to us for more than one piece of the puzzle.”

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