The Insurance Brokers Association of Manitoba (IBAM) is holding its annual general meeting, conference and trade show this week – but of particular interest will be one of the featured speakers, a former broker and Olympic medal winner.
Cheryl Bernard is best known for her long list of curling accomplishments and awards. A four-time Alberta women's champion, Olympic silver medalist and perennial top five fixture on the World Curling Tour for the past eight years.
But what many may not realize is where she got her start – in general insurance – where she went on to build a brokerage from the ground up.
“At the age of 23 I started my own general insurance brokerage in Calgary,” says Bernard, “and we had no clients when we started. But by creating a dynamic agency culture that empowers, we propelled the agency to $6 million in sales in 11 years.”
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Bernard says the key to success for brokers is to surround yourself with quality people, the key to her own success when she ran a brokerage. And more than ever, with tougher competition coming from directs and the big banks, to make customer service a top priority.
“I’ve been out of the industry for quite a few years now, but the biggest thing I took while working was customer service, giving excellent service,” she says. “It is something I’ve carried through into everything I do ever since. You are selling the same product as the guy down the street, so the only difference is between you and the next broker is the service you give.”
After more than a decade in the insurance business, Bernard decided to re-focus on curling, writing and fundraising – selling her agency to Western Union Insurance. But curling was soon placed once again on the backburner, when her father was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was given six months to live. (Continued.)
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Bernard spent that time caring for her father, until he died two years later.
Now, Bernard spends her time doing motivational speaking for corporations and schools, including this Friday at the IBAM convention, sharing the lessons learned from sport and life.
“I’ve transferred a lot of the lessons I learned while in business and sport and how I’ve applied them,” she told Insurance Business. “And it is motivation, and very truthful, about different losses and wins that form who you are in life.”
In addition to helping shape her motivational speeches, her father's illness was the catalyst to create the annual ‘Curl for a Cure’ in support of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. In the five years that this event ran from 2003 to 2007, more than $1.3 million was raised in support of the CBCF.
