One chapter is coming to a close for Jason DiReto (pictured) while another is just beginning. The broker is wrapping up his third and final year on the board of directors for the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO), though he also has new responsibilities at the Jeffery & Spence Insurance Brokers office after his promotion in September to vice president of the brokerage.
DiReto didn’t plan to get into the insurance industry back when he was 17 and working at a grocery store part-time, but that’s where he ended up after his father, Enzo DiReto and the now-president of the business, asked him if he wanted to help the Jeffery & Spence team with office work. In the summers, DiReto would work at the brokerage full-time, and moved his way up from filing and scanning paperwork to doing renewals and policy changes, eventually getting his RIBO licence on his 19th birthday.
After four years at university, some travelling and a master’s degree, DiReto came back to the brokerage and moved from a customer service role into a sales position, where he was until his recent promotion. For a long-time insurance professional who works at a business that’s closing in on a centennial – Jeffery & Spence opened its doors in 1927 – DiReto has seen what he calls drastic changes in the insurance industry, which is one of his favourite aspects of the job.
“Things are always moving and I learn something new every day in this role,” he said. “There’s certainly always something interesting going on within the industry or an interesting company that we get to insure. I think that’s the best part – that we can deal with a manufacturer one day to a technology company the next day, so there’s a lot of variety that it offers you and advising businesses is certainly a passion of mine.”
The landscape of the insurance world is also changing, with Jeffery & Spence itself going paperless right around the time that DiReto started working at the brokerage and now considering launching a mobile app, with an emphasis on taking things slow and steady.
“We’ve taken a wait-and-see approach because there is so much going on in the industry and we want to make sure that [because] it is a large capital investment, we make the right decision,” said DiReto, adding that an app is a huge financial undertaking for a small to medium-sized office. “I’m familiar, from being on the IBAO board, with the different options out there and we certainly investigated all of them. It’s just for us, we haven’t made a concrete decision and we want to see where the [IBAO] Broker Flow project goes and what comes out on top.”
In fact, getting data connectivity in place for brokers and carriers has been on the minds of industry participants for many years, according to DiReto.
“It really feels that at this time, we’re right at the cusp of it being able to happen and I think to IBAO’s credit, we’ve done a great job facilitating it and getting all the key stakeholders in one room,” he said. “I think that’s so important, and if it does work out, for a broker not to have to use multiple portals in personal lines – what a time saver and what a cost saver from an administrative standpoint.”
As for saying goodbye to a position at the IBAO that he’s held for several years, DiReto only has fond memories and experiences to look back on and take forward with him into the next part of his career trajectory.
“It’s one of the best things that I’ve been able to do. I think just having a seat at the table where you’re discussing so many high level items, and being able to represent this area and the needs of this area accordingly, but also having a voice and an opinion, and being able to create change within the industry as a group has been so rewarding,” he told Insurance Business. “Along the way, you meet some incredible people that have the same passion for the industry as I do, and you just really make some great friends along the way.”
