Brokers urged to leverage brand power of insurers they represent

In addition to aggressively developing and marketing their own brands, brokers should also be leveraging the brands of the insurers they sell instead of hiding them, said Alister Campbell, CEO of Zurich in Canada.
Speaking at the Insurance Institute’s “At the Forefront Breakfast” in Toronto, Campbell delivered his presentation entitled “The Seven Secrets of Selling Value in a Price-Driven Age.”
Campbell referred to recent industry results showing declining ROEs and spoke of the need for the insurance industry to create value. By creating value, insurers can maintain a healthy pricing level, while at the same time keeping consumers satisfied.
In order to sell value, all companies, particularly brokerages, need to develop and market their brands, he continued.
Branding involves developing a forward-looking statement that tells the consumer what to expect if they purchase one insurance product over another.
Campbell said some very successful insurance brands exist, but “there are no famous retail intermediated property and casualty brands in Canada.”
“The companies that are famous are direct,” Campbell said. “The companies that are famous are captive agents. The direct guys have to build brand because that’s how they capture customers. The captive guys have to build brand to create enough value for that captive network to sell and maintain the loyalty of that captive network.”
By the time you get to the broker, he said, that channel has no margin left after commissions and claims and premium taxes to actually invest in brands. “Which is why today no broker company has better than 10% un-aided awareness among consumers,” he continued.
“So, I would argue that part of the reason why our industry is chained to this cycle of misery is the failure of the leading players to work out how to square the circle around building brand in property and casualty through intermediated distribution.”
As a final point, Campbell stressed the need for brokers to leverage the brand power of the insurers that they represent in order to promote their own value. “The brokers who will outperform over a sustained period of time will brand themselves and proudly promote the brands of the companies that they represent rather than trying to hide them,” he said.
“Not everyone will agree, but that is a view that I hold passionately.”