“Carpe diem. Seize the day boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”

– Robin Williams as John Keating
in Dead Poets Society, 1989

Robin Williams had an amazing gift to make people laugh and he was likely the greatest comedic genius of his generation. Yet his role in Dead Poets Society demonstrated his enormous talent in any forum.

The term carpe diem – or, literally, “seize the day” – originally came from a poem called Odes, written by Horace in 23 BC, and experts state the term suggests one should do all they can today in order to make one’s future better tomorrow.

It is a call to arms, and for Trisura it’s been our rallying cry for some time. Indeed, in our broker survey of 2012, you told us that while you think very highly of our people and their service, you would like us to expand our reach by providing increased capacity, a broader appetite in the products we currently write, and new products and services.

We have been busy. As you will see in our “featured employee” section, we have brought in Kathy Ionni to lead the expansion of our CGL capabilities. Our first steps will be to extend our current offering of CGL coverage to more of our existing business, particularly in the professional liability space. As we gain momentum in this area, we will then begin to consider other aspects of the business world where we can provide a broader appetite for this product line.

Earlier this year we implemented a national programs solutions team, led by Jennifer Finnell. We have greatly increased both our appetite for, and our efficiency in, delivering programs. This is working well for us, and I believe our brokers, in both the commercial surety and corporate risk (E&O, D&O) product lines. Many of these programs are on our online portal where an insured can enter basic information in order to receive a quote, bind the coverage, pay online and print the policy or certificate. The efficiency gained for the insured, our brokers and ourselves is significant.

Speaking of commercial surety, we are now writing one-off business on our online portal through our broker network. To get more insight you can view the video in which Pina Mazzoli discusses the portal, available on a link through this newsletter and on our website.

We have developed a partnership arrangement with IDT911 to provide automatic privacy and data breach protection on every one of our corporate risk policies at no additional charge for all of our insureds. Our very own Richard Grant was recently featured on Insurance Business TV: Today’s Big Picture discussing cyber liability.
We recently consummated our acquisition of the surety business outside of Quebec of L’Unique and have added 4 staff, several hundred accounts and a number of new brokers to our Trisura family.

In contract surety, we increased our in-house capacity in the past year, allowing us to issue bonds on projects well in excess of $100 million. This represents more than triple the original capacity we had when we opened for business 8 years ago.

In our risk solutions (warranty) area, we are pleased to announce that we have received our federal license in both accident and sickness (A&S) and creditor protection and are now in the process of receiving our provincial licenses. We will be utilizing these licenses to augment our business in both the extended warranty and program space and expect to be writing business very soon.

Trisura remains a broker focused company and in August we became a full partner of the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada’s Broker Identity Program. By investing in the program, Trisura supports the campaign whose purpose is to raise awareness of the value of the insurance broker distribution network.

This is just a cross section of the initiatives our team has been working on over the past year and I hope that you will both see and approve of the continued enhancement and growth in our capabilities.

We thank you for your support as we move towards $100 million in annual revenue. I expect us to reach that lofty milestone by next year, and further expect to more than double the size of Trisura by the year 2020. We couldn’t do it without you! And of course, we couldn’t do it without seizing the day. Carpe diem. Make your life extraordinary.

Mike