IBAM – Aviva and the view King Street West – where all the top tech firms are locating

Executives and Board members from the Insurance Brokers Association of Manitoba (IBAM) visited Aviva’s Digital Garage in Toronto on March 30th. The purpose of the visit was to hear first hand about all of the exciting initiatives that Aviva is working on to help brokers.

The entire group from IBAM was impressed by the time they spent with Aviva’s digital engineers, tech and marketing consultants, and executives and finance teams with respect to the rapidly changing landscape in terms of Aviva’s current and planned digital connectivity- between insurer, broker and consumer.

IBAM Executive Darren Peters, who will become IBAM President this month, noted that Aviva’s present and future commitment to the broker channel of distribution was highly evident in all aspects of its digitization strategies and actions. “Aviva’s plans for, and commitment to broker inclusiveness moving forward are real and Aviva has our definite support in this regard,” said Peters.

The plan of the IBAM Board is to swiftly disseminate to its membership all information learned through its initial visit and subsequent meetings with the AVIVA team. “We will be taking what we’ve learned thus far and we will be conducting town halls and instructive and interactive sessions with our members throughout the Province – and country where necessary – in order to inform our members of the swift change and enormous opportunities vis a vis connectivity and service delivery in the current market place” said IBAM CEO Dave Schioler.

IBAM intends to ensure that its broker members will have good knowledge of and access to AVIVA tech consultants in Manitoba through instructive and interactive sessions in IBAM’s own in house classroom. IBAM also has plans in the coming weeks and months to foster and develop its own Tech Think Tank (IBAM TTT) in order to have brokers in Manitoba and across Canada participate in ensuring that brokers have superior and seemless digital means of connectivity as between insurers and consumers in the market place. Schioler says   that “IBAM is determined to ensure that its brokers, technologically and otherwise, are provided with the right tools in order to offer to consumers sufficient levels of advice and choice along with the ease and speed of transaction that they seek. We are convinced that insurance consumers moving forward will want the emotional and professionally served side of their insurance purchases complete with the right capacity to buy electronically. AVIVA is obviously working hard at moving in this direction.”

IBAM has similar plans to meet with other insurers over the coming weeks. IBAM members will learn much more as they meet during IBAM’s coming Convention April 25-27 in Winnipeg. IBAM is expecting over 3,000 registrations during the 3 days with over 1,000 in attendance at its President’s Gala Thursday, April 27th.