Headquarters: Vancouver, BC
Website: alteri.ca
How did your brokerage get started?
Founded in 2017, the company was bootstrapped by Joshua Krenus through the sales of life and living benefit policies. In 2018, Colin Brown, co-founder and COO of Canadian Direct Insurance, joined the board of directors and helped the company transition to a general insurance agency. In 2018, Alteri sold its first policy. Today, the company is home to 10 agents writing millions in premium.
What differentiates your brokerage from the competition?
Alteri is a young agency with senior talent; therefore, the company is both technology literate and experienced in product. Alteri has received a lot of attention since inception, which has allowed us to gain early traction among markets and clientele. In addition, we started as a life insurance agency, which is extremely unusual and has given us the ability to be literate in both life and general insurance languages.
Do you have any big success stories from the past year?
We acquired our first general insurance agency, Marquis Underwriting, which brings us more markets and more senior producers. In 2020, Alteri was nominated as Brokerage of the Year at the Insurance Business Canada Awards.
What’s the biggest challenge facing brokers in 2021?
Last year proved to be a difficult one with placement. A lot of insurers have tightened their appetites even further, which is placing downward pressure on submissions in an already hard market. The biggest challenge for agents in today’s marketplace, as I see it, remains finding underwriting approval for new and remarketed risks. Part of the reason we are seeing more MGAs enter the business is due to this stress of insurer appetite. We look forward to seeing the market soften in the coming years.
