THE INSURANCE Brokers Association of B.C. is downsizing.
Via a mail-in vote, the association’s membership recently approved a special resolution that calls for a smaller board of directors.
Executive director Chuck Byrne told Thompson’s that the vote, held after two years or more of reviewing the bylaws, was 99% in favour.
“We’ve downsized the board of directors by about six or seven positions, depending on how things work with elections.
“We’ve divided the province into five main territories instead of approximately 20, and we’re going to appoint two directors from each of those territories, plus have the ability to make more skills-based additions to the board.
“We’ve also downsized the executive committee by a couple of positions, and also reduced the amount of time to qualify for officer positions.”
He said fees are not increasing, but membership is.
“We’ve never had a higher number of member offices represented,” Mr. Byrne said. “Close to 860 of the operations in B.C. are member offices.”
Meanwhile, shake-ups of another sort — in technology and in the ground — will be explored at next month’s IBABC annual conference.
The event kicks off May 11 at the Victoria Convention Centre, adjoining the Empress Hotel, with an update on the Insurance Corp. of B.C.’s $400m PolicyCenter point-of-sale system due to be launched this fall.
“We’re going to have Nicholas Jimenez, head of the project, speaking . . . to bring everybody up to speed on what’s coming, what’s delayed, what’s exciting, what’s a little scary and all of the above,” Mr. Byrne said.
Mr. Jimenez is ICBC’s senior director, insurance product and portfolio strategy.
“There’s significant effort still underway for the finalizing of the system and testing and things like that.”
More tech tips come May 12 in ‘The Futurescape of Insurance,’ presented by Nick Batistic, account executive with Integro Insurance brokers, and ‘The Digital Future of Insurance’ with Catherine Smola, president and ceo of the Centre for Study of Insurance Operations, and Charles Giroux, analyst and application developer at the centre.
Mr. Byrne said the CSIO team will present “tools and tricks and tips and things that are coming down the line for brokers to get more and more into digital marketing and delivery.”
On Friday, May 13, the focus turns to more literal shake-ups: Earthquake preparedness, or the lack of it. Tim Grafton, ceo of the Insurance Council of New Zealand, will speak on the five-year-plus recovery process following the 2011 Canterbury quake, which was stronger but less destructive than the Christchurch quake that followed six months later.
The other speaker lined up for this session is Henry Renteria, a former director of emergency services in California who was commissioned by the B.C. government in 2014 to evaluate the province’s earthquake preparedness.