The Ontario Broker - October 2019 - 6

STRONGER TOGETHER
IN EVERY WAY
BY JEFF GATCKE, PRESIDENT, IBAO

I

t's my most favourite time of year. Every October
brokers from across Ontario come together to learn,
network and share best practices. We address key
issues, discuss challenges and opportunities and
meet some of the individuals we've been working
with throughout the year but haven't had the
opportunity to meet face-to-face.

We network with industry partners who can help us
deliver on our businesses' goals and objectives, and we
celebrate achievement across the channel. Honouring
the accomplishments and success of our peers is a key
motivator to pushing the envelope on our strategies and
driving our businesses and selves forward-it's been a
rough year for many of us after all!
Despite facing today's hard market, as brokers we must
remember to take time away from the day-to-day of
our businesses and connect with peers and partners to
strategize for the future. Networking and sharing don't
just feel good, they're vital to the overall future success of
the broker channel. When we act collectively, we have a
stronger voice-much more so than as individual brokers
and brokerages.
Convention brings it all together, once a year. It's a time to
pause and reflect, looking critically at what we do and the
value we offer consumers.
A key theme this year is technology, but unlike prior
years, it includes everything under its umbrella and
crosses all lines of business-from consumer data,
its use and consent, cyber risk, black box technology,
online quoting and digital strategies to communicate
with your clients, including the legal use of electronic
proof of insurance.

OCTOBER 2019

6

As you know, owning the consumer relationship is gold.
The price of this commodity in our hands is directly linked
to our customers' data, who has access to that data and
what it's used for. How you determine what data you share
along the life cycle of the insurance policy supply chain is
something every broker needs to be thinking about.
Electronic proof of insurance could very well be the
inflection point in client communication for our channel.
It may be something we've been anticipating for years,
but here we are. As brokers we need to find new ways to
communicate with our clients in meaningful ways. Ones
that may or may not fit within current business models or
our comfortable ways of doing business.
Quoting is becoming more complicated for personal
lines and new products continue to evolve to respond
to the changing environment in which we thrive. As
the products we sell evolve to cover risks like cyber
liability and overland water, brokers need to continue
to implement innovative ways of delivering value
to our customers. Online quoting in both personal
and commercial lines has been the topic of many a
conversation this year-whether or not it's effective,
strategic or undervalued. Ultimately it comes down to
what works for you as an individual brokerage and within
your respective market and customer strategies.
For those of you attending Convention, I look forward
to sharing what IBAO's been up to, where we see the
opportunities and challenges and what we're planning as we
enter a new strategic planning cycle to continue evolving
our value proposition. I'm proud of what we've been able to
accomplish this year and excited about what we're working
on and where we plan to go-what better way to celebrate
than at the largest insurance event in the country.

WWW.IBAO.ORG
http://WWW.IBAO.ORG
The Ontario Broker - October 2019

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