Be the Broker: How one company beat the M&A giants at their own game
When a large industrial company lost their insurance broker to multiple acquisitions, they decided to take bold action and start their own independent brokerage – not just to service their own business, but to restore an independent insurance option to their town.
There’s a lot of lore out there about small towns in Canada – some accurate, some fanciful – but one thing universally true of small towns is that community is everything.
So, when the FTEN Group of Companies, headquartered in La Crete, Alberta, started looking around for an insurance broker able to take on its complex insurance needs, they decided to put the community first by facilitating the formation of a new, locally owned and operated, independent insurance brokerage under the CMB banner.
“We like to invest in this community,” says Lauren Dyck, HSE & Risk Control Manager with FTEN. “And really, that’s the driver behind CMB La Crete.”
If launching an insurance brokerage doesn’t seem like the most obvious way to support and invest in a community, Dyck urges you to think again. “We thought, if we make this move, and CMB comes into La Crete, then the revenue from that business would stay here and will pay local wages, local rent, local sponsorships.” And create local jobs, when the physical office opens in 2025.
It’s an interesting and creative move from one of La Crete’s largest employers and most established business entities. It’s not like FTEN was looking for something else to do, but they are always looking for ways to build community and, in an odd twist of fate, searching for their own insurance solution provided the means to give back in a big and meaningful way.
From little acorns…
Logging, trucking, construction – FTEN’s business comes with high inherent risk and requires complex insurance coverage. Dyck says the organization was already managing as much of its insurance program in-house as possible in order to manage claims and control costs. “But there’s only so much you can do like that, and our premiums kept going up.”
He says they had a great relationship with their previous brokerage but, like many independent brokerages in recent years, it fell victim to the industry’s red-hot mergers and acquisition (M&A) landscape. “It was independent, but then the company got sold to a bigger company, and then that was sold to an international conglomerate,” says Dyck, adding the further away the decision-makers were, the less power he had to negotiate on policies. “FTEN was just data on a spreadsheet.”
That’s when he began to think laterally. “After our previous broker sold to a larger company, we thought, ‘could we go to market here and see what we could do?’ And the conversation turned to bringing a brokerage to La Crete.”
While the plan was to bring an independent brokerage to town, one that FTEN could work with the way it wanted to in terms of flexibility and negotiating power, everyone realized that, if this venture was to be successful, FTEN couldn’t be the only customer.
“If you have enough business, you can make a go of it,” says Dyck. “And there’s a lot of industry here, farms, other small communities, First Nations – there’s enough to support a business in La Crete and service the North.” So, they reached out to other local logging and construction companies, such as Northern Timber Management, Pineridge and Garden River Logging, to see if they’d be interested in supporting a new, local brokerage, and they were.
That was when Dyck and FTEN CEO Philip Unrau connected with Ben McDonald, CEO of Insurance Growth Network (IGN) in Edmonton. They wanted to know from an expert if their idea for an independent brokerage in La Crete could fly. Yes, said McDonald. Yes, it definitely could.
Lauren Dyck, HSE & Risk Control Manager with FTEN
From idea to reality
McDonald established IGN specifically to help independent insurance brokerages and producers maintain their independence through organic, internal growth. It takes planning, adherence to goal setting, accountability and very hard work, but with IGN’s support, many mid-market brokerages have staved off the M&A giants and charted their own course toward success and prosperity.
It’s a journey McDonald took himself, growing CMB Insurance Brokers from one office and a small staff in 2013 to multiple offices and over 150 staff in 2024. It’s not about acquiring new brokerages, he says, that’s not IGN’s focus at all. “We’re here to build brokerages by supporting the people who want to establish and grow them.”
When the people at FTEN called in mid-2023, McDonald was already well aware of the insurance landscape in the La Crete area, including the loss of independent brokerages through rampant acquisitions. “They wanted some self-insurance options, they wanted to know how to participate in the product and bring insurance to the community in a meaningful manner,” says McDonald.
He worked with all the proponents – the other local businesses who’d expressed interest in the concept – and developed a business plan. “Once we had all those businesses under the same roof, we could leverage that buying power and get creative,” says McDonald. It meant individualized insurance policies for each company at highly competitive prices. Suddenly, CMB La Crete was born.
The initial launch was virtual in that CMB Edmonton handled the La Crete brokerage by writing the policies, offering admin and accounting support, and so on. “We offered a turn-key operation,” says McDonald.
CMB La Crete becoming a reality changed everything for the local businesses interested in the venture. “Customization of insurance products, especially when it comes to the transportation side, is so important,” he says. “The market access CMB has to the larger insurance suppliers – they have experiences and contacts that small town brokerages just don’t have.”
CMB La Crete becoming a reality changed everything for the local businesses interested in the venture. “Customization of insurance products, especially when it comes to the transportation side, is so important,” he says. “The market access CMB has to the larger insurance suppliers – they have experiences and contacts that small town brokerages just don’t have.”
That kind of flexibility and customization is a key differentiator for CMB La Crete. This office, says Dyck, can really drill down on what a client needs, insurance-wise, and develop customized products for them at competitive prices. “We can focus on a handful of clients whereas a larger broker can only focus on the region,” he says, adding the latter approach results in blanket policies that don’t always match a client’s need – like when FTEN was just data on a spreadsheet. “How can we build a better, creative product? What kind of product can we build?”
Since then, Dyck has been advocating on behalf of CMB La Crete and business is growing. “FTEN is supporting CMB to get a foothold here,” he says. “We’re supporting them coming here and we’re trying to give local businesses an opportunity to spend their insurance premiums here.”
Ask for more, always
But CMB is not the only insurance broker in town and Dyck is sensitive to the dynamics of that. “You’re not going to switch insurers just because CMB is local,” he says. “But I’m asking people to give them a chance, see how competitive they can be and know that if they do switch, your premiums stay local.”
The fact that FTEN has made that switch is important to Dyck. “We wanted to find a way to do this (insurance) better, and we can share that with others,” he says. It’s also important to him that, as it takes root in the community, CMB grows on the strength of its products and service alone. “We don’t want to build CMB’s name saying it’s better than the next guy,” he says. “We are just saying look at what we have, what we are. We need to show it’s worth making the change.”
McDonald couldn’t agree more, saying that clients should always be in the driver’s seat and if their broker isn’t able to give them what they need, they should look elsewhere. “Challenging the status quo when it comes to insurance is well worth the effort,” he says. “I would encourage buyers to not just take it on the chin when it comes to insurance. Challenge the way you buy the product. Re-evaluate, re-think, re-imagine how you buy policies. A lot of brokers just don’t know how to be creative, or don’t want to.”
Staying local
As CMB La Crete prepares to establish a physical office in town, Dyck is helping to recruit staff, and he can’t wait. “The biggest community benefit is the careers,” he says. “Getting a business representative in La Crete is going to change everything. Now there’ll be a face – a person who can come to your door.”
And not just in La Crete, either. “If it’s less than a five-hour drive from here, it’s a day trip,” says Dyck, adding that he’d love CMB La Crete to serve all the communities around it right up to High Prairie.
But what animates him the most is the reality of keeping revenue local. “When you pay premiums to an international company, that money just leaves your town,” says Dyck. “But when you work with a locally owned brokerage, revenue stays here in the form of wages, sponsorships, advertising. It’s communities serving communities – that’s the biggest driver.”