From the article "Insurance Brokerage Delivers on its Promises"
by Miranda Webb, Leading Edge -- June 12, 2007
Can An Insurance Broker Really Put the Client First? Meet CEO Al Sibilo. The Visionary CEO Has Created a New Paradigm in Risk Management and Insurance Services for Businesses in Alberta.
Of all the expenses a business owner faces, insurance has got to be one of the most difficult to appreciate. It’s expensive and you need to suffer a loss before you benefit from it. Even if you don’t make a claim, your rates continue to rise. And to make matters worse, typically your broker only calls when your premium is due. You may need insurance, but you don’t like it.
However, there is one company that stands out. Milestone Risk Management and Insurance Services built an innovative business model to create a different kind of insurance brokerage. In an industry navigating a paradigm shift in how business owners are purchasing their insurance and risk management services, Milestone’s CEO Al Sibilo is leading his company to the top with fresh ideas, an innovative business model and a client-first orientation.
The traditional sales-focused broker model has brokers working on commission. Sibilo has transformed this reality by creating “Risk Managers” who are salaried. This simple change means Milestone’s staff can afford to spend valuable time with clients to really get to know their business and their needs. Risk Managers conduct comprehensive insurance, risk management, and claims reviews to fully understand a client’s operations risks, gaps and exposures. Then they provide tailored, strategy-driven solutions.
Milestone’s Risk Managers help identify a business’s potential risks, not just the accidental ones, and help develop a strategy to address them all. They will sit on client’s safety, accident review and various other risk-related committees to help make the company safer.
This focus on service continues throughout a client’s relationship with Milestone. Milestone’s Risk Managers meet quarterly with their clients. This way they can really get to know the business, identify areas of concern, give advice on solutions and assess the company’s changing needs.
Not only do Milestone customers get exceptional customer service between renewal dates, but when it comes time for renewal, Milestone knows their customers’ businesses so well they can coordinate the effective showcasing of their clients to the insurance industry and take steps to ensure they are fully understood and appreciated by the underwriter who will price their coverage.
The result: the best premiums and plans available.
Milestone has value-added programs that assist their clients in closing the gap between the current condition of the business and the owner’s vision for growth. They partner with clients to help them achieve their growth targets. Invitations to workshops designed specifically for the client’s industry, training for managers and annual CEO-to-CEO meetings are all part of Milestone’s client-first orientation.
Sibilo has created an insurance brokerage that delivers on what it promises. His company is an extraordinary example of how to build a business model with leading edge leadership, a sharp focus on making a valuable contribution and achieving long-term profitable growth at the same time. Milestone Risk Management & Insurance Services is a full service risk management firm and property & casualty insurance brokerage specializing in working with businesses in transportation and oil & gas in Alberta.
Our History
Having spent a rewarding career at two major insurance companies over twenty years, Al Sibilo had long observed the dysfunctional relationship between the three main players in most commercial insurance transactions – Client, Insurer and Broker – and instinctively felt there must be a better way to guarantee that each of their respective needs were equitably satisfied.
A few years earlier, the owner of a successful insurance agency in California had come to similar conclusions about his business – the larger his agency grew, the more Ron Hoefer came to realize that his Consultative, Client-Focused Approach was not being emulated by the other brokers on his team. Quite to the contrary, the business he was building with ‘traditional’ brokers was incongruent with everything he stood for, and so in 1997 he decided to do something about it.
Through synchronicity, in early 2003 Al Sibilo was introduced to Ron Hoefer’s Orange County agency, Milestone Risk Management & Insurance Services, when Ron’s story was featured in Rough Notes, a major trade magazine for the insurance industry in the U.S.
As a result of ensuing e-mails, and over numerous meaningful conversations and four visits to California in two-and-a-half years, a Mentorship was formed and Milestone was born in Canada.
Our business objectives, philosophies and values are, in many respects, modeled after the California Milestone experience.