From planner's interviews to an insurer's renewal letters

Mandate

Grow the insured book across four channels while reducing complaints and declines that customers did not expect.

Outcomes

• Explained the 2024 average renewal increase of 17 per cent pet by pet, with complaints at 2.1 per thousand renewals
• Supported a records review that cut pre-existing-condition declines from 15 to 6 per cent of first-year decisions
• Raised broker-written new policies from 6,100 to 8,000 after aligning prices across channels
• Insured pets grew from 84,000 at the end of 2021 to 118,000 at the end of 2025

Decisions in context

The chief executive created this role when our growth began to outpace the explanations customers received. I took responsibility for brand, acquisition and partner marketing, and later for the renewal and first-claim letters that customers read most closely. My work depends on colleagues who hold the decisions I communicate. The appointed actuary and pricing team set rates, underwriting decides exclusions and claims decides payments. I make sure that what we advertise, what we write and what our partners say all describe those decisions accurately. Each of the three cases on this site was contested inside the company, and each reduced a growth measure that a colleague was accountable for. I present quarterly to our board on marketing, distribution and conduct indicators and report annually to Sallowbrook's conduct and customer committee, attending in an executive capacity rather than as a director.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing for a first independent directorship compatible with this role.

Mandate

Build national marketing for a former managing agency that had relied on Sallowbrook's Prairie brokers.

Outcomes

• Opened the Sherbrooke office with six French-language marketing staff in 2020
• Extended clinic referral partnerships from 310 to 690 clinics
• Launched direct online sales in 2021, including the discount later withdrawn

Decisions in context

I moved from the parent mutual to a company that had just become an insurer in its own right. Tamberlow had grown through Sallowbrook's brokers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta and now needed to reach owners across the country who had never heard of it. I hired our first Quebec team, built referral agreements with veterinary clinics and introduced direct online sales in 2021. Not every decision aged well. The online-only discount I approved helped us learn the direct channel quickly, but it later undermined brokers who had carried the brand from the start. Pandemic adoptions lifted new sales sharply in 2020 and 2021, and I spent part of that period planning for the higher first-year cancellations that followed. I also learnt that clinics judge an insurer by its claim letters rather than its brochures, a lesson that set my priorities afterwards.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief marketing officer when the chief executive separated marketing from sales management.

Mandate

Make renewal, claims and policy communications understandable to policyholders and usable by brokers.

Outcomes

• Introduced broker briefings two weeks before renewal increases reached customers
• Rewrote one-page summaries for home and farm policies with claims and legal review
• Served on the working group applying regulators' fair treatment guidance to customer correspondence

Decisions in context

Sallowbrook gave me responsibility for the documents that customers and brokers relied on after the sale. Following a hail-heavy summer, home premiums rose in several districts, and our notices stated new amounts without giving reasons. Brokers took the calls. For the next cycle I arranged briefings so that brokers saw the explanation two weeks before their clients did, and we rebuilt the notice around the questions people were actually asking. I also led the rewrite of summaries for home and farm cover with claims and legal colleagues. The aim was not to replace the wording but to tell a reader plainly what it did not cover. Membership of the working group on fair treatment widened my view further. It turned comprehension into a conduct question, which I could raise with senior colleagues as a responsibility rather than a matter of style.

Reason for the move

Moved to Tamberlow when it became a licensed insurer majority-owned by Sallowbrook.

Mandate

Support broker sales of home and auto cover in a company new to consumer marketing.

Outcomes

• Built the first broker co-marketing programme with 60 brokerages
• Produced renewal-season guides for broker staff
• Commissioned the first research among policyholders who left at renewal

Decisions in context

Insurance was new to me, and I spent my first year learning from underwriters, claims adjusters and brokers. Sallowbrook belonged to its policyholders and had grown through rural brokerages that knew their clients personally. My instinct from consumer goods was to advertise directly to homeowners. Brokers soon showed me that their recommendation mattered more than our name. I built a co-marketing programme instead, funding local advertising that carried both the brokerage and Sallowbrook, and I wrote renewal-season guides so that broker staff could answer common questions. I also commissioned the company's first research among policyholders who had left. Many said they had not understood why their premium changed, and several had not realised their brokerage could have explained their options. That finding led directly to the renewal briefings I introduced after my promotion.

Reason for the move

Promoted to director with responsibility for broker marketing and customer communications.

Mandate

Grow the therapeutic diet range through veterinary recommendation.

Outcomes

• Introduced clinic-staff training sessions on two therapeutic diets
• Withdrew a weight-control claim that clinic staff considered overstated
• Grew therapeutic range sales from C$11 million to C$19 million

Decisions in context

At Northfallow I learnt how veterinary clinics work as a channel. A clinic team recommends a therapeutic diet to clients it will see again, so it judges every statement on a bag or leaflet against its own reputation. I spent many days in clinics listening to receptionists and technicians, whose explanations often reached owners before the veterinarian's did. One episode stayed with me. A weight-control claim written by our agency tested well with owners, but clinic staff told me it overstated what the food could achieve without changes in feeding. I withdrew it and accepted a weaker launch. The range still grew, and clinics trusted our next campaign more. The role gave me my first budget responsibility and a lasting understanding of how a professional intermediary protects the customer relationship it holds on behalf of others.

Reason for the move

Joined Sallowbrook to move into financial services marketing at a policyholder-owned company.

Mandate

Coordinate client work and, from 2001, interview customers and staff before creative briefs were written.

Outcomes

• Ran customer interviews for a lumber retailer, a dairy co-operative and a savings institution
• Wrote creative briefs grounded in staff and customer interviews
• Introduced a counter-staff review of advertising claims for retail clients

Decisions in context

I joined Brackenhowe straight from university, coordinating schedules, approvals and production for regional clients. In 2001 I became a planner, which meant talking to customers and front-line staff before the creative team began. Our creative director had a rule I have kept: a claim in an advertisement must be something the client's own employees could repeat to a customer without embarrassment. For a lumber retailer that wanted to promise reliable delivery, we interviewed the yard staff first and found that delivery windows were dependable only in summer. The campaign promised what they could keep. I learnt to separate what a client wished to be known for from what its people could actually deliver. I left because I wanted to own a brand's results rather than hand recommendations to a client and move on to the next account.

Reason for the move

Moved client-side to manage brands directly and live with the results of marketing decisions.