Destiny’s Broker

Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO) president-elect Rick Orr has a family dynasty of more than a century in the insurance broker business. One gets the impression his pathway to becoming an insurance broker was a product of destiny rather than the result of a personal career choice.

“I guess it’s kind of in your blood when you’re a fourth-generation insurance broker,” Orr said in a sit-down interview at the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC)’s annual general meeting in September 2011. “It started with my great grandfather in 1895, and we just grew up with it.”

Literally, you might say. The office of Orr Insurance Brokers Inc. is located in Stratford, Ontario in the original Orr homestead built by Orr’s great-great grandfather in 1874. “It’s kind of neat to go the
office every day, and you’re home,” he says.
Despite a family tradition of more than 116 years in the insurance broker business, Orr says he never felt pressured to become an insurance broker.

“A lot of credit goes to my father, who was Tom, not Ken,” Orr says with a smile, signaling one of his infamous, good-natured jabs at popular IBAC veteran Ken Orr. [Ken Orr has held several senior executive positions with IBAC through the mid-2000s].

“My Dad never, ever pushed us into the industry. He always said, ‘Do what you want,’ and my brother Jeff and I both ended up following in his footsteps.”

Still, tradition looms large in the professional background of the 43-year-old broker. It also shapes Orr’s personal ethos about how brokers might conduct their business in the future. Orr envisions brokers re-dedicating themselves to their successful, traditional activities of building personal relationships with clients, community involvement and collaboration.

From a very early age, Orr’s father introduced his son to the essence of what it means to be an insurance broker. “Some of my memories as a child were following Dad to house fires late at night, watching him interact with claimants and the fireman, and helping to put people’s lives back together,” he says. “As a kid, I just stood back and watched Dad helping people. It’s the same message I give to my [producers]: ‘What do you do? You help people after there’s a problem.’ That’s what we really do as an industry and that’s something I saw that I liked and I ended up going down that path.”

Orr enrolled in the insurance program at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario in his early twenties. He then joined the Hartford Insurance Company in Toronto, where he worked for two years in the commercial underwriting department. While at The Hartford, he first met his wife Jane, who was a senior underwriter there at the time.

Jane eventually went to work for Intact (then Wellington Insurance) in Kitchener, Ontario. In 1992, Orr got the call from his Dad: “We’ve had a producer leave. If you want to come back and help, now would be a really good time.” Orr joined the Stratford brokerage in 1992 and married Jane in 1993.

Given his family’s long history in the business, it is not surprising Orr believes brokers gain a great deal of strength by drawing on their traditional roots. “My theme for my year as [IBAO] president is: ‘Be a broker, be involved,'” he says. “To me, it’s undeniable that the success of the brokerage industry for generations has been because they’ve been so involved with their clients and their communities. Brokers are just an integral part of the community. They know their clients, they interact with their clients. That’s been our success for generations.”

He sees the community work of his great grandfather in Stratford as an example of what he means. “They call him the Grandfather of the Park System,” Orr says. “The park system that we have in Stratford today, which inspired the Stratford Festival, would not have been there had he not challenged government.”

In 1912, the local government wanted to place a railway line along the Stratford riverfront. Orr’s great grandfather insisted the riverfront should be reserved for parkland. He campaigned door-to-door calling for a public plebiscite. The citizenry voted against having the rail tracks along the riverfront.

Succeeding generations of Orrs have carried on that tradition of community involvement. Over the past two years, Tom Orr has been co-chair of Stratford’s hospital capital campaign. Jeff Orr, Rick’s brother and business partner, was co-chair of the Rotary Recreation Complex Capital campaign. Rick now sits on the local hospital foundation and chairs the Stratford Parks Board (the fourth generation of Orrs to chair the parks board).

“IBAO consumer studies clearly show that consumers actually want their brokers to be part of the community, not just a sign on the building,” Orr says.

Which brings us to brokers establishing a presence in online communities. Orr expects technology to be a major item on the agenda during his term as IBAO president.

Although he describes himself as “not a tech guy,” Orr has participated in a number of broker technology organizations and projects, including serving as a broker representative on the board of the Centre for the Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO) and a member of IBAC’s technology committee. From this vantage point, he is excited about projects that aim to improve broker-carrier connectivity. He also believes there is a place for brokers in the social media space.

But Orr cautions brokers not to allow emerging technologies to distract them from their storied tradition of local, face-to-face community interaction. “I’m a little concerned that some of the brokerages are getting so big, or are hiding behind technologies, they are not getting as involved in their communities or with their clients as we need to be,” he says.

The key is balance. That means recognizing and adopting existing and emerging technologies, and adapting problematic technologies so that they fit better with the broker business model.

“One of the messages over the next year or so will be: ‘Brokers need to look at their business models,'” Orr says. “In today’s world, technology is driving consumer expectations. Consumers need different interaction than what we’ve done in the past [longer hours, for example, or improved online services]. We need to update our business model in the way we transact business. I’m not saying we need to become a virtual broker or call centre. We just need to progress. You need to adjust your business model.”

Related to technology and adjusting business models, collaboration with industry groups and stakeholders will be another key theme during Orr’s IBAO presidency. In particular, Orr is looking for a collaborative approach towards improving online consumer interaction.

“Insurance companies are renowned for competing with each other,” he says. “They attempt to compete with each other and build better technologies. But every time an individual insurance company builds a better consumer-facing piece of technology, it actually disadvantages the brokers, because now we have all of these individual pieces of technology out there distracting the consumers.”

The focus should be on improving consumers’ interaction with brokers through broker driven technology, Orr says. “The effort we have to put in [as brokers] is to convince the companies that this is the right direction and that this is a good idea,” Orr says. “We need to work together.”