Sowing Seeds

Dale Rempel, president and CEO of Rempel Insurance Brokers, is in the growth business, but he doesn’t just specialize in the growth of the bottom line. The incoming president of the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC) started out as an agrologist – someone who provides professional and unbiased expertise to members of the agriculture industry – before making the shift to insurance.

Rempel’s specialist knowledge has allowed him to carve out a niche professionally, in terms of selling agricultural insurance. It also makes him aware that, as IBAC president, achieving positive growth for the industry requires nurturing relationships with valuable stakeholders.

Born and raised in Morris, Manitoba, a small town not far from Winnipeg, Rempel studied agriculture and business at university. While in school, he supported himself by selling crop hail insurance. After obtaining his degree, he took a job with an ag-chemical company. Two years later, a broker approached him and suggested he become a general insurance broker. A brokerage in his hometown came on the market a year later that called his name – sort of.

“The unique thing is that the firm was called Remple Insurance, but the family that owned it was not related to me,” he says. “Our name is spelled slightly differently, as ‘Rempel.’ It was perfect. It was a small brokerage, my wife and I didn’t have kids yet. I was only 24 or so then. We’re both from Morris, so it was nice to move back to our old community. That’s where it really started.”

After purchasing the firm (and adjusting the spelling of the name to reflect this new ownership), Rempel drew on his background as an agrologist to carve out a niche in the Manitoba marketplace.

“Not many professional agrologists get into the insurance business,” he says. “That gave me a good in with larger firms. We serve a lot of ag-chemical dealers, custom applicators and do quite a bit of long haul trucking business. We were able to develop the long haul trucking business because of the connections I had managed to make on the grain side of the business.”

The firm now has 12 staff members and does long haul trucking business all over the province. “We’re one of the largest independent brokers in Manitoba in that line,” he says. “A lot of smaller or even mid-size firms tend to shy away from it. They feel there’s a specialty needed that they just don’t have.”

Typically, small independent firms rely primarily on personal lines, Rempel says. But commercial accounts constitute roughly 70% of his brokerage’s business. Alas, when your commercial accounts are primarily based on the agricultural industry, years like the past one – with increased claims from farmers due to hailstorms and record flooding – can create challenges.

The location of his brokerage has acted somewhat as a buffer. Rempel’s brokerage is located in the southern part of the province and, even though they are on the banks of the Red River, overland flooding does not pose as catastrophic a risk as it does to his counterparts to the north.

“We have a rain dyke around Morris,” he says. “We are protected, and the farmland gets flooded. But, we get regular high water, so the farmers know how to deal with it. This year, farmers just seeded a little later than usual. The areas of Manitoba you’ve heard about in the news over the past year are not areas that typically deal with floods. When we’re talking about a 1-in-300 year event, it’s happening in areas where they have never seen floods before.”

IBAC

Rempel is hoping to put his skills of cultivating growth to work in the coming year as the president of IBAC. A key focus during his term will be to continue to build upon the relationships with key stakeholders and members of government that IBAC has worked so hard to establish over past years.

“The insurance business as a whole is a relationship business,” he says. “I think most brokers in general are successful because of our ability to build relationships.”

Over the long term, if an issue develops and the broker channel needs to convey a message to legislators, having those relationships in place will be essential, he says. “If we never talk to MPs or MLAs and there’s a problem and we go running to them, why would they want to give us the time of day? It’s like building any relationship. I think we’ve done a great job over the past while, and I think that’s why we’ve had a lot of success in the ventures or issues we’ve had to deal with.”

These good relationships played a key role in federal finance minister Jim Flaherty’s 2009 decision to amend the Bank Act so that a bank’s Web site is now treated as though it is a branch, Rempel says. The decision was a huge boon for brokers.

And now, IBAC members are girding themselves once again for the next five-year review of the Bank Act in 2012. Events in the world market over the past three years or so have demonstrated Canada has a strong and robust banking system – one might even argue it’s the envy of the international community, Rempel says. Keeping that in mind, he doesn’t foresee the banking industry calling for any major changes to the Bank Act, nor has the government indicated it would be amenable to significant change. Be that as it may, the broker channel must remain vigilant and be prepared to defend its territory, Rempel says.

Maintaining positive relationships, even in so-called peaceful times, is essential, he continues. These relationships serve the same important function as the proverbial water-cooler chat.

“They may not tell you exactly what’s going on, but they may give you a little indication or nudge about what’s coming,” Rempel says. “They may say, ‘We’re going to look at all angles of this issue. You should probably be aware of that.'”

IBAC is currently keeping a watchful eye on one issue working its way through the halls of Parliament Hill right now. Canada is drafting new regulations that would allow the demutualization of mutual insurance companies.

“We feel that if the regulations come down, depending on how they come down, it could really change the landscape of the entire insurance industry,” Rempel says. “If it becomes easy for mutuals to just demutualize for no real particular reason, it could have a huge impact on the marketplace. We are going to monitor that closely.”