The Go-Between

One could say Ross Totten has been around the insurance block – and around again.

But a little mileage never hurt anyone, particularly in an industry that counts experience and relationships as the fuel that makes careers go.

After four decades as an insurance intermediary, the man officially known as H. Ross Totten, FCIP, CCIB is set to take yet another turn as he readies to leave his post as chairman and chief sales officer of Totten Insurance Group Inc. at the end of June. His latest role at the company he co-founded with partners Laura Moses, Mike Callon and Carol Gawrylash follows a decade as president and CEO.

Totten, whose father was a broker, retires feeling secure that the company bearing his name has a leadership team, headed by Heather Masterson, he has characterized as among the “best in our industry.”

Totten’s career in insurance dates back to 1966. “As Bill Cosby said in one of his routines, ‘I started out as a child,'” he quips.

In fact, his first job was in the claims department of Pitts Insurance Company in London, Ontario. He was there for nine months when an opportunity arose to move into underwriting in commercial auto at London and Midland General Insurance Company. Totten stayed there for more than three years before he was on the move again.

This time, in 1970, he headed to Leamington, Ontario and a new position at South Western Group. There were a few changes along the way, of course, including that he and his partner, Roger Hodgson, purchased the business in 1980. They grew the local company from a single office in southwestern Ontario to, at one time, a national business with nine offices across Canada.

By 2002, it was time for Totten to sell. That was the spring; by the fall, he and partners Moses, Callon and Gawrylash chartered Totten Group. The wholesale brokerage was up and running by early 2003.

“We built the company from two offices in London and Toronto to six offices across the country,” Totten says.

A subsidiary of HUB International Limited purchased all of the company’s stock in October 2007. “Aligning ourselves with HUB gives us the financial base to explore more opportunities in the wholesale intermediary field,” Totten said at the time. “HUB International’s resources coupled with our independence as a separate HUB allow us to offer our brokers and markets a broader range of niche products going forward,” he added.

NEW CURVE

Come June 30, Totten will again be on to something new – or, at least, new-ish. He intends to reactivate the consulting firm he founded before starting Totten Group. Totten had done some consulting in the period between South Western and Totten Group. “I found it very rewarding because I got to do different things and every day wasn’t the same,” he says.

As it stands, Totten has no preconceived notions of what he will be doing. But with the wealth of insurance companies that do specialty business, retail brokers, adjusting firms, restoration contractors, Lloyd’s brokers and syndicates, he suggests opportunities abound. “Really, I would just look at any opportunity and say, ‘That’s something I’d like to do,’ and equally important to me, it’s somebody I would like to work with,” Totten says. “If anything, I’d like to work with specialty insurance companies or retail brokers who want to develop specialty classes of business and find ways to market them,” he adds.

“Too often, some insurance companies decide that they’re going to go direct or they’re going to control the distribution channels. I think the success of wholesalers in Canada and the success of retail brokers in Canada has been their ability for intermediaries and brokers to work together to find ways to write new and difficult classes of business.”

Some of that history can be aided by being as current as possible. “Technology is hugely important,” Totten says, adding that insurance companies and Lloyd’s, for example, should find how to deal with their intermediaries or retail brokers electronically.

“If we can get rid of some of the mundane processing so we can focus the people we’ve got on more detailed work, more interesting work, then that will help our industry. So it’s very, very important that we find ways to streamline our industry using technology,”Totten says.

“Quite frankly, if you’re not doing that, you’re not going to be around in five or 10 years,” he says, pausing before adding, “probably three to five years.”

Freeing up time opens the door for people to have more discussions about products, solve problems and answer questions. That personal contact is essential – and not just at renewal time.

He recommends giving clients a call, at the very least, halfway through a term so brokers can mention a product the client may need, ask questions or promote risk management.

It is a way to help build relationships, which he credits as at the heart of Totten Group’s success. “They’re not dealing with Totten Insurance Group because of some mystical name on the top of the building,” he says, but rather because of the individual who professionally and efficiently gets quotes to the producer and then places the business. “That personal relationship is what gets things done.”

That relationship may never be more important than when a claim is filed. “That’s when brokers separate themselves from call centres,” Totten says. “Having a claim is a very traumatic experience and people appreciate help getting through that,” he says.

“We need to have some empathy with them as to the shock and the problems that they’re having and realize this is what we really are selling,” Totten says. It is not just about coverage, but also about providing help and walking claimants through the process.

“As long as insurance brokers can do that for their clients, they have nothing to worry about from the banks or anybody else selling it over the telephone. Personal service will beat these guys out over time.”

TEACHER, TEACHER

Totten, an early recipient of the National Leadership Award for Established Leaders, as well as a past governor of the Insurance Institute of Canada and a former president of the Insurance Institute of Ontario, appreciates many things, including an education – any education. “I’ve said to our people here, ‘If you can tell me that taking a basket-weaving course helps you be a better employee for our company, or helps you be better in your personal life, I’ll pay for the basket-weaving course.’ I don’t care how you’re educated – just, every day, try to learn something new,” he says.

Never stingy about giving back in this regard, Totten has been a course instructor for the Insurance Institute, a co-ordinator of Insurance Studies at St. Clair College, a teacher and lecturer for RIBO licensing and CAIB courses, and a frequent speaker at industry events dealing with niche or specialty markets.

He is encouraged by the turn insurance education is taking, citing the new FCIP curriculum through the Insurance Institute as a case in point.”Five years from now, when you have a FCIP person who’s graduated under the new course, you’re going to really have a business MBA person in insurance. This is a huge leap forward,” Totten says.”We hold ourselves out as professionals, and I think it’s important we prove that each and every day,” he says.