"Commercial marine is a viable business in Canada"

APRIL Canada director sheds light on the state of the marine insurance market and where he sees it going from here

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Apr 10, 2018 Share

Claude Deslage (pictured) is now the director of commercial marine lines for APRIL Canada, but his education started in sports, and not insurance. He was introduced to the industry during his time in school and never looked back. Specializing in commercial marine after spending time in commercial insurance was a significant step for Deslage, but he had help from the tight-knit marine insurance community in Canada.

In this Q&A, he told Insurance Business about the diverse nature of his daily work, his optimism about the insurance market, and one of his passions outside of work.

Tell us about your career trajectory. How did you end up in the insurance business and in your current position as director of commercial marine lines at APRIL Canada?

I actually have a degree in sports and leisure. I took a summer job working for a broker doing automobile and residential claims. Once I started doing that, I never went back to school, so, from that point on, I stayed in insurance and started doing commercial claims, and I was very interested in learning about marine, because I was doing some small cargo claims.

I applied to Aon – Reed Stenhouse back in the day – and I applied to work in their commercial marine claims department. I worked there for about 10 years, moving from claims to brokering, and I’ve been doing that now for about the last 25 years.

What was the learning curve in going from commercial insurance to commercial marine?

I had some very good teachers along the way so I think that was the biggest help that I had. The gentleman that first hired me came in from the UK and he specialized in marine. When you work for a broker like Reed Stenhouse, they have the specialty lines there so there are a lot of people in the office that have a lot of experience.

And marine is a very small community, so when you go out in the market, everybody knows everybody. Over the years, I’ve been a member of the Canadian Board of Marine Underwriters (CBMU), and they celebrated their 100th anniversary last year in Montreal. Part of that association is pretty much all the marine underwriters in Canada and everybody shares all their information, everybody shares all their knowledge.

What is the most fulfilling aspect of your work?

The different challenges every day. Every day, I come into work and I’m not sure what’s going to come by my desk. The one thing with commercial marine is I can do both – I can do marine liabilities, load brokers, ocean cargo, tug and barge operators, so you never know what comes by your desk any day. It’s never the same thing. That’s probably the biggest challenge in the job that I do.

When you look back at your career, what would you say are your proudest accomplishments?

The first time that I was involved in a major international account, I was out to tender and I won that account. That was probably, for me, my greatest accomplishment at that time. I was working on the merger of two major accounts, with a strong marine exposure, and this was my baptism to marine brokering. Marsh was on one side of the account and Aon was on the other side, and I was working at Aon. We were competing against Marsh that had the account for the last 10, 15 years, and I won the account on the marine side. For me, that was probably a big turning point in my career.

I tend to believe, if you ask me what’s the best thing about what I do, it’s the people in the industry that I meet every day. Like I said, we’re a small community. I can pick up the phone and call anybody and discuss files together, and I’ve had a lot of really good teachers over the years.

How does APRIL Canada differentiate itself from competitors?

APRIL Canada is a new venture to commercial marine. We’ve only been doing it for about two and a half years. They had a big book of yacht business and I think the differentiation that we bring to the table right now is my knowledge. I like to teach, I like people to learn about commercial marine, and I spend a lot of time with the brokers because they don’t have big knowledge of commercial marine. When they call me, I spend a lot of time explaining it to them so they actually really understand what they need to do and how to do it.

We have some good markets behind us, we have a lot of great capacity, and the knowledge that we bring to the table is a big asset.

What are some of the challenges you encounter in commercial marine lines?

The biggest challenge is trying to get people to understand what exactly they need to cover and how to go about doing it. There is a lot of competition in Canada. Commercial marine is a viable business in Canada, and it generates a whole lot of premium. I think it’s a market that’s growing because specialty lines is the way to go in the future as well.

What changes in the insurance industry have you seen over the past few years that have affected your work?

I don’t think it affects mine per say, because a lot of the changes you see are people going direct or people maybe bypassing brokers and maybe some companies trying to do stuff more directly. I think we see that on personal yachts right now, but we don’t see it in commercial because it is a smaller community. It’s a smaller, really niche market. I don’t see a hard market ever coming. I don’t see that coming in marine - I don’t see that coming anywhere.

I can see down the road where people go and buy their commercial insurance online, and do not have to go through a broker or speciality, but I’m not sure you’re going to be able to do that on commercial marine. There is a specialized expertise, same with other niche products. I [also] find the consumers are much more educated on insurance now than they were 10 years ago.

If you weren’t working in the insurance space, what would you be doing right now?

I would be working with children. I do a lot of volunteer work now – I coach hockey and I teach young kids how to play hockey. I think I would probably be working in a youth centre or a team centre and just being a mentor for youth.

"If you're not growing, you're dying"

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