The future of commercial brokers: RIMS Canada Conference

Commercial brokers could soon find the nature of their work changing, according to Brian Parsons, president and CEO of Willis Towers Watson Canada.

“Our roles as brokers are going to change,” Parsons said, speaking at the CEO Panel Plenary at the RIMS Canada Conference. “Right now we talk to clients and prospects and do lots of consultative work to get to the transaction. Because right now, that’s how brokers make their money, for the most part.”

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But, Parsons noted, millennials are less interested in the transactions brokers can help them make and more interested in the consultative services a broker can provide.

“They want that quantitative analysis,” he said. “They want to know how the sausage is made—not just the delivery of the sausage.”

Parsons envisioned a day where brokers are compensated primarily for their value as consultants. “We’re going to get compensated not because of the transaction—that would be table stakes—but because of the consultative process and getting to a transaction,” he said.

This story was originally published by Canadian Insurance Top Broker.