An Emerging Leader already taking the lead

When the CEO of ProFormance Group in Pickering learned she had been selected as an Emerging Leader by the Chartered Insurance Professionals’ Society, she was honoured and humbled.

Risk Management News

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When the CEO of ProFormance Group in Pickering learned she had been selected as an Emerging Leader by the Chartered Insurance Professionals’ Society, she was honoured and humbled. But more than anything else she was touched.

“You do what you do, never really expecting people to take note of it,” said Tammie Norn. “Being honoured like this – it puts a smile on your face; you feel like you are really making a difference. It is a great feeling. Just being nominated is an honour!”

Norn was among five leadership award honourees announced last week by the CIP Society, recognizing current and emerging leaders.

Norn started her own business, ProFormance Adjusting Solutions Inc., in 2008. In five short years, she has grown it in a challenging market to three locations with 23 staff, a subsidiary, and most recently, a parent company. Perhaps most significantly, many of her current staff members are individuals that she has taught and guided herself through her various training initiatives.

The current president of the Ontario Insurance Adjusters Association, Norn has helped develop in-depth injury training modules for both the OIAA and for the Insurance Institute of Ontario. (continued.)

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“Over the past four years I have been working with the institute,” she says, “and I look back it is something I look back on and I am happy to have been a part of that from the ground up, from the beginning. Happy that so many people within the industry have partaken in the courses.

Norn completed her CIP designation in 2001 and her Fellow Chartered Insurance Professional in 2008. She has been instrumental in developing training and educational opportunities for the industry, creating and teaching courses at the Insurers’ Advisory Organization’s IAO’s School with CGI, and helping to develop in-depth injury training modules for both the Ontario Insurance Adjusters Association (OIAA) and the Insurance Institute of Ontario.

Norn spent three years as an Insurance Institute ambassador, helping connect young people with insurance careers, and has served on the CIP Society National Council. She is the President of the OIAA and chair’s its Adjuster Training Committee, and is a member of the Canadian Independent Insurance Adjusters Association.

While developing material for training, Norn has been described by her peers in the entry submission to the CIP as being able to both lead and be a member of the team, bringing in various perspectives to help increase the value of the program for future students and always keeping the benefit of the adjusters and the industry in mind.

“It is always nice to build something,” says Norn. “I take great satisfaction in helping develop these teaching courses.” (continued.)

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Like Ginny Bannerman, who was the recipient of one of the two Established Leader honours (click here for more on Ginny Bannerman), Norn doesn’t see herself as a female broker, and does see the insurance industry as open to men and women equally to take advantage of every opportunity available.

“I’ve never considered myself a female businesswoman,” Norn told InsuranceBusiness.ca. “I own an independent adjusting company, and I don’t hear ‘oh, what a great job you’re doing as a female.’ I don’t hear that within the insurance industry; I do hear that outside the industry. But I really don’t feel that way. People respect who they are, and not by their gender within the industry.”

If Norn had one piece of advice to give her fellow adjusters to make the lives of insurance brokers a little easier, it would be to make sure the right data is reaching them to properly assess risk.

“There is an opportunity, not a challenge as I see it, to make sure that the right data is being used to better assess risk,” says Norn. “If we as adjusters throw a 48 column report at brokers, they are going to go through it line by line. It is up to us to make sure that we develop an awareness, ensure the right data is being used in the claims.”

Outside of the industry, Norn has committed to pairing up with the Jennifer Ashley Children’s Charity (JACC), which provides financial assistance to families of seriously ill children. She began helping in 2010, sponsoring teddy bears and donating gifts to a yearly raffle. When it came time to organize an event to formally launch ProFormance Adjusting, Norn decided to make it count and paired with JACC to host a fundraiser.

Now an annual event, the fundraiser has helped raise increasingly more money, with $10,000 raised in 2013.
 

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