Toronto Star’s Paul Dalby: Insurance Company A Family Affair.
Category: “News” Posted: Sat, August 15, 2009
A sleepy farming village in the Northumberland Hills seems an unlikely setting for a titanic struggle of David and Goliath proportions.
But that's exactly what's unfolding here in the insurance world.
On one side of the ring is the corporate Goliath controlling most of Ontario's insurance industry.
And stepping up with a slingshot is a veritable David in the shape of the family-owned Allen Insurance company.
In the past three years of rapid expansion, the company has built up sales to more than $20 million a year with a client list of 14,000. The Allen family and their staff still know all their customers by first names.
And when family patriarch and company president Bryce Allen goes home each day, he usually fields after-hours claims calls from customers.
"I don't think the president of RBC answers a claims call at home, do you?" smiles Allen.
Clearly it's a case of the small town "touch" combined with big city smarts that has made Allen Insurance into something of a rural monolith.
Now it has launched its biggest offensive against the Toronto-based insurance establishment with its own bundle of auto and home insurance for the over-50s set called Cinko.
"With this Cinko package, we are actively competing against companies like CARP (Canadian Association of Retired Persons) but our advantage is that we don't have to be in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver to do it," says Allen. "We just love being David."
Johanna Allen, 36, and her brother Nathan Allen, 30, are the third generation of the Allen family at the helm of this burgeoning small town insurance company, now in its 106th year. And they're happy to be following in the footsteps of their father Bryce, who himself as a 21 year-old fresh out of Seneca College went to work for his dad Grant in the company back in 1967.
Even taking two years off to travel and live in Europe did not dampen Johanna's enthusiasm to work for the family firm. "Dad never forced me to come back into the business, I just knew I was ready to come home," said Johanna.
Nathan, an account executive, also took his time before entering the family fold, studying sales and insurance in two separate stints at college before selling seeds for Purina and season holders' seats for the Ottawa Senators hockey club.
"All around, it's tough working in a family business but very, very rewarding as well," he said. "Our name is on the front door and I think we have to act accordingly and work harder."
Three years ago the Allen family took a big step by building a five-storey high-tech headquarters, the biggest building in this village of 600.
Allen Insurance also hired a new marketing firm to launch an aggressive new promotional campaign with radio and newspaper ads.
Not content with selling other companies' insurance products, Allen Insurance quickly carved out a growing reputation with its own offbeat insurance products - like "Ride On" which targets mature motorbike riders; and another called "Second Chance" to serve clients with previous claims and convictions that other companies won't insure.
"Many times our competitors have the same packages so we decided to find our unique competitive advantage," Allen explains. "Turns out that motorcycles are one of them.
"We found we had a lot of clients with motorcycles, and lots of insurers didn't want the business because in an accident, the person on the back ends up with a serious bodily injury," says Allen, who adds that typically his new biker clients are not "hotshot riders" but people over 50 who can now afford a nice bike and the time to enjoy riding it.
Other branch offices in Cobourg, Brighton, Campbellford, Havelock and Trenton staffed by 44 employees, all locals, keeps the company connected to its customers. But Bryce Allen believes that the company still draws its greatest strength from being deeply involved in the communities where they live.
Like many insurance brokers, his company is a strong supporter of local kids' sports teams.
"But it's not just giving money in a small community, you have to give your time and that's the most expensive commodity," he says.
Recently he and his wife Janice, a retired schoolteacher, teamed up with another couple to replace the footpath approach to one of the village's churches.
It's a commitment to community that would have been appreciated by Grant Allen, who sold the very first auto insurance policy in this village in 1928 to the local druggist, A.N. Smith, who also owned the only car in the village.