The first-time homebuyer who barely understands what “deductible” means. The newcomer to Ontario who has never bought insurance in this market. The long-time client who has been renewing on autopilot for 15 years. In too many brokerages, they all get the same script.
On paper, insurance is a relationship business. In practice, workflows, KPIs and systems still tend to flatten every client into the same process. That gap between what the industry says it values and how it actually operates doesn’t just show up in customer satisfaction scores. It shows up at the worst possible moment: when a claim is made and the client discovers they did not understand what they bought.
“I think there’s a large segment of customers who simply don’t speak insurance language, and the industry really hasn’t figured out how to serve them the same way as someone who walks in knowing exactly what they want,” says Irfan Suleman (pictured), director, personal lines client care at Ontario-based Mitch Insurance.
His core critique is simple but uncomfortable: too many brokers manage transactions; too few read the client’s journey.
For Suleman, “journey” has become almost an obsession. He contrasts a first-time buyer navigating insurance for the first time, a newcomer who has “no concept of Ontario insurance,” and someone who has been renewing comfortably for 15 years. The industry’s mistake, he argues, is treating them as interchangeable.
“The brokers who really stand out are the ones whose teams read the journey, not just manage the transaction,” he says. In his view, the job is to meet every customer where they are on that journey, not just where it is convenient for the brokerage. That sounds like standard marketing language, but it collides with how most brokerages actually operate. Management systems, scripts and performance dashboards are still designed around units of work (quotes, calls, renewals) rather than around different client starting points.
The cost of that one-size-fits-all approach is largely invisible during sales and renewal. Complex language and rushed explanations create gaps between what the customer thinks they are buying and what the policy actually covers, but those gaps usually stay hidden. The emails go out, the policy renews, the metrics look fine. Clients often do not ask questions because they do not know what to ask.
“The gap doesn’t really show up during the renewal or a policy change,” Suleman says. “It really shows up at claim time – and that’s the worst possible moment for the disconnect around language to appear.”
That is when earlier shortcuts become acute. The client who assumed “flood” meant any water damage. The newcomer who thought contents were automatically covered at full replacement value. The homeowner who believed choosing a higher deductible was just a minor tweak. The claim may be handled correctly according to the contract, but the experience feels like a betrayal. Whether or not the misunderstanding was “technically their fault,” the brokerage carries the reputational hit.
For Suleman and his team, this is not just a soft communications issue. They are explicitly focused on long-term loyalty and on “translating” insurance conversations into language clients actually understand. “Investing in the way we communicate is one of our top strategies, not just this year but moving forward, because that gap has to be closed,” he says.
If the business case for journey-based service is so clear, why do so few firms deliver it consistently? One answer, Suleman argues, lies in how the industry has adopted productivity tools.
“There’s without a doubt ongoing pressure on productivity and efficiency,” he says. That pressure is not going away. The problem is what leaders do with the technology built to serve it. “When leaders truly understand the tools that their teams use every day, and stop managing outputs and start removing obstacles, the customer experience improves organically.”
The key is that phrase “truly understand.” Many managers sit above their systems, staring at dashboards without ever living through the workflow as their front line does. They know the numbers, not the friction. Without that fluency, tools are almost inevitably deployed as instruments of surveillance.
“The most common mistake I see is using efficiency tools to measure people rather than support them,” Suleman says. That mindset pushes advisors to optimize for what the dashboard rewards – shorter calls, higher volumes – rather than for understanding. Coaching degenerates into reviewing numbers instead of building skills. Any attempt to slow down and tailor a conversation to where a client actually is on their journey looks like inefficiency.
Suleman suggests a deceptively simple shift in the questions leaders ask. Instead of “Who isn’t performing?”, start with “Where is my team stuck?” In his experience, that change alone alters how tools are used. The same platform that once served to police staff can highlight which processes create bottlenecks, where extra training is needed, and where automation would free up time for real listening.
The tension, of course, is cost. Brokerages cannot simply double the length of every client interaction. Suleman’s answer is that they do not need to. The goal is not to create five different workflows for five client types, but to define clear standards and then apply intelligent flexibility.
He applies the same idea to clients and staff. “One uniform approach is something that I find does not work,” he says. “What I’ve realized is that building consistency first in the standards allows that flexibility in the way we approach it.” In practice, that means agreeing on non-negotiable service basics – like making sure a client truly understands key coverages and trade-offs – while also training teams to recognize when a situation calls for slowing down, explaining more, or translating jargon into plain language.
The focal point for all of this is the claims conversation. Suleman regularly asks his team to picture “the day something goes wrong.” Analytics and production metrics matter, he says. But they are secondary to what happens when a client is frightened, confused and about to discover what their policy really means. That is the moment when all of the earlier choices about journey versus transaction and support versus surveillance become obvious.
He believes brokers need to keep that day at the centre of their decisions. “Let’s remind ourselves why we got into this business and the important part we play in our economy, but also in our communities as well,” he says.
