Portals and digital tools are becoming a central test of how managing general agents (MGAs) deliver value in Canada’s commercial insurance market. At the National Insurance Conference of Canada (NICC), panelists debated whether portals are truly enhancing distribution and client service, or whether they risk introducing new challenges in an industry already struggling with data gaps and digital integration.
Pete Tessier (pictured left), president of the Canadian Association of Managing General Agents (CAMGA), asked Sean Duggan (pictured right), senior vice-president of special risks and claims at KRGinsure, whether portals are giving MGAs a real advantage in distribution. Duggan said the answer depends on the type of business.
“I like portals in the sense that I think they’re the right tool for the right kind of placement,” he said. “Turnkey transactional business – take the friction out of the transaction by investing in those digital tools. They’re not necessarily the right fit for consultative business above a certain threshold.”
The key, Duggan argued, is usability. “If it’s a portal, and you’re still going to get asked 50 questions, that’s not really a solution,” he said.
Some MGAs, particularly in cyber, have simplified their systems to just a few questions – website, revenue, maybe one or two others – that can generate a quick quote. “That’s huge,” Duggan said, especially for brokers looking to cross-sell, upsell, and expand client portfolios in a market where organic growth is difficult.
Stephen Stewart (pictured centre right), president and CEO of Stewart Specialty Risk Underwriting, joked about the simplicity: “What are those questions? How much is your claim, and when do you want it paid?”
Tammy Parris (pictured centre left), assistant vice-president of corporate underwriting at HSB Canada, described a long and sometimes bumpy history with portals. She recalled working on one of the earliest web-based distribution tools in personal lines, where uptake was limited and often misaligned with broker needs.
“At HSB, we had a portal for our brokers, and we really didn’t have much uptake,” she said. “It was actually being used by a broker that was owned by one of our competitors to place their ugly business.” That system was eventually shut down.
But portals are returning in a more focused form. Parris said HSB is now developing cyber portals with short, targeted questions and fast referral processes. “There’s definitely a place and a solution for that in the market,” she said, while stressing the need for controls.
We have to balance that with understanding what’s coming in, who’s doing it, their due diligence, which brokers are going to have access to it, and which MGAs will have access to it. We don’t want to open it up to absolutely everyone, Parris added.
Duggan added that portals are at their best when they are dynamic rather than rigid. If they’re open to calibration based on broker needs and feedback, not just a static portal trying to “fit a square peg in a round hole”, that’s a big win, he said.
For portals to truly streamline underwriting, Tessier noted, they must be powered by better data. In the US, vast public datasets help insurers model and price risks, but in Canada, access is more limited. Stewart said that reality constrains how far portals can evolve.
“The more data you have, the easier it is to come up with models,” he said. “But the question with portals, for me, is when does the consumer just go directly and bypass the broker? That’s already happening in personal lines.”
Artificial intelligence, Stewart suggested, may eventually take over much of the underwriting process. “That’s where those things are going. It’s inevitable – just probably not in the next few years,” he said. In the meantime, Canada still lags in collecting and consolidating marketwide data. “We don’t do a great job of that right now,” he added.
Duggan agreed, noting: “We don’t have the same level of data insights at scale. But I think there are some learnings that can be taken from the US experience for sure.”
When Tessier pressed on minimum technological standards, Parris said carriers like HSB expect MGAs to bring a core level of capability before being considered for partnerships.
“They need a good BMS system of some sort. They need good CRM systems of some sort to know who their clients are. They need all the tools that can be used to create proper policy documents and declaration pages,” she said.
Agility is also critical: “We want to know their systems are nimble. If we do have a product upgrade, they should be able to get into their systems quickly. We don’t want to wait two years for the next enhancement.”
Stewart added that cybersecurity is now a non-negotiable part of the technology discussion.
Duggan said the conversation may eventually shift from best practices to mandatory requirements. “I could see at some point in the future regulators mandating brokers carry cyber coverage,” he said. “Most do, from what I understand, but just an actual mandatory requirement – because everything is digital and data-driven.”
