“There are two important days in your life: The day you are born and the day you find out why.”

– Mark Twain, author and philosopher

The day you find out why you were born. Think about it. To me this speaks of reaching or fulfilling or maximizing ones potential – fulfilling ones destiny. Making a difference. “Changing-the-world-for-the-better” kind of stuff.

But I also believe it is based on what is truly important to you – and perhaps it doesn’t really matter if it’s not that important to others. It could be the first time you look into your child’s eyes or see them reach their full potential. It could be landing your dream job with the ability to affect change and positively impact the lives of others. Maybe it’s the charitable work you do in helping others find their way. Perhaps it’s something you start or invent. It could be that you simply live your life having a positive impact on the world around you, making it a better place.

I can’t make the claim that I’ve already arrived at this day. In fact, I often say that I am still trying to figure out what I am going to be when I grow up! That being said, I feel that I have learned enough in my half a century of experiences to believe that if you are truly going to make a difference, affect change, or reach your potential: the secret ingredient is passion for what you are doing. It is the ultimate trump card. Without passion, you are simply going through the motions.

I wouldn’t make this statement if I didn’t understand what ‘going through the motions’ is like. In 2002, when the company I was passionate about was sold to an international insurer, I was required to stay for three years to help with the transition and integration. My working life and role changed dramatically and I soon found myself ‘going through the motions’. My passion for what I did and my circumstances were no longer aligned. I knew I had to change those circumstances in order to rekindle passion for my work.

So Trisura was born nearly a decade ago, and we started the company because we had a passion for the insurance business and the people and relationships that make it the wonderful industry that it is. Passion enabled us to flourish. Passion led Trisura to the philosophy of excellence and urgency in everything we do, to our mission of becoming trusted advisors to our brokers and all stakeholders, and to our noble purpose of creating an exceptional stakeholder experience. We passionately believe it can be done better.

I recently attended a workshop where the instructor referenced a study on the average employee. Staggeringly, only about 5% of what the average employee does actually provides value back to their customers. In my opinion, that sounds like a whole lot of going through the motions! While I don’t believe the statistic applies to either Trisura or our brokers, it did make me think that we could do better in terms of delivering value our brokers.

Our goal is to be continuously improving—always focusing on how we can create more value for our brokers and your customers. We realize this means knowing your needs, and then delivering. We want to enhance our strategic vision to increase value in order that we can assist you in the challenging days ahead.

Start with a team of people who are passionate about the insurance business, focus on creating deep and meaningful relationships with our brokers, and work tirelessly on providing value to them in a manner that is a step above. That is why Trisura was born.

The surety CSR process has been the same for decades: Send a paper CSR by mail, fax or email and hope an owner responds. This process was inefficient and labour intensive. Now, all CSR’s are electronically delivered directly to the Owner, revamping the process to make it quicker, less tedious, and an overall smoother user experience for CSR recipients. Email will be our only delivery method moving forward as part of continued efforts to integrate advanced technologies in our business processes and reduce our carbon footprint.

We’re always encouraging our staff to come up with new ideas to do things better and more efficiently. In this case, the idea for change came from our operating units on the floor, not from closed-door decisions. Sarah Mainella, our Manager of National Surety Services, meticulously overviewed the process, from the inception of the idea to the implementation, working closely with our systems team to make sure everything ran smoothly. The new CSR process is a great insight into the innovation achieved by cultivating a mentality of increasing efficiency and improving the service we provide to our brokers.

The new process involves:

• The Owner receives an email with a link directing them to a CSR specifically created for their project.
• The Owner is then asked to answer a few contract-specific questions.
• Once completed, the CSR details are communicated to Trisura in real time, allowing Trisura and our brokers quick access to contract information.
• The CSR link can be forwarded—so if by chance the email is sent to the wrong person within the Owner’s office, it can be re-directed to the correct individual

As the insurance industry moves forward into the technological future, Trisura aims to integrate applications, devices, and ideas that progressively improve upon existing processes, but this does not mean we abandon traditional methods completely. Although our CSR’s will no longer be distributed in PDF format, our Surety team can quickly retrieve a copy that can be forwarded using traditional methods, in the event a copy is needed.

This is an exciting initiative for the Surety group at Trisura, and is a prime example of one of the numerous ways we are making game-changing advancements. Among the advantages our new CSR system offers is a revamped level of efficiency. Our surety team now has more time to serve brokers and clients better, and faster than ever before. We identify and embrace the notion that certain technologies can enable us to better serve our brokers and their client’s needs. Our new CSR system is an exceptionally useful technological advancement that furthers our mission of being a step above in all aspects of our business.