How Hub is leveraging technology to provide a full view of its business

Hub International is working with tech vendor Applied Systems to build a common technology platform so that its employee benefits and other lines are able to talk to each other.

“Service excellence demands that we have a fulsome view of our clients and an understanding of the businesses they are in, the issues that they face, and the solutions that they need,” Jamie Greenfield, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Hub Financial, told Canadian Underwriter recently. “The best way to gain that insight is through a single view of our client and through gathering data that allows us to make recommendations to protect their businesses and their employees.”

How is Hub developing this common tech platform for employee benefits and property and casualty lines? By working with tech vendor Applied Systems to bring an employee benefits module to its existing Applied Epic system, Greenfield reported.

“Our pilot office has been live in the system since November,” she said. “In January, we took our second office live with great success, and throughout 2020, we are continuing our implementation of Epic for [employee benefits] across Canada.”

Greenfield made her comments to provide a status update of the implementation of the tech platform. In January, 2019, Hub International Canada president Tina Osen told Canadian Underwriter that the brokerage was building a common tech platform so that employee benefits and other lines could talk to each other.

“It’s about that complete offering,” she said at the time. “We had looked at our business in the U.S. that has a very significant employee benefits program and just felt that there was a tremendous opportunity to springboard off of what we built in the U.S. and bring those capabilities into the Canadian marketplace.”

Related: Hub’s take on the merger between P&C and employment benefits

Osen also said in January 2019 that as it continues to expand its employee benefits solutions, Hub International is training its more than 4,000 employees in Canada to articulate that it is more than just a P&C brokerage. There is a training and development and learning curve with helping P&C people speak the language of employee benefits, Osen said at the time. How is that progressing?

“It is going very well,” Osen reported earlier in March. “We speak about our value proposition at every sales meeting, every town hall. We have dedicated sales leadership who are focused on embedding this value proposition in our people’s talk track. That is not something that is one and done, it just becomes a continuous part of our culture. Our teams will get more and more proficient as they practice more and continue to reinforce this messaging to our client base.”

Since launching the initiative to expand its Canadian employee benefits solution in 2018, Hub has acquired 28 Canadian brokerages and grown its employee benefits practice to more than 20 offices. Hub’s Canadian employee benefits practice includes over 400 staff and in excess of $100 million in revenue and $1.5 billion in premium.

Related: Why Hub bought Morneau Shepell’s benefits consulting practice

What are the brokerage’s future plans in the employee benefits space? Osen said Hub has a very disciplined approach to M&A and also looks for three things when buying:

Geographical fit – “does the acquisition provide a solution for us in an area which we are under-represented or don’t have a presence?”

Niche – does the company bring some specialized product or skill sets that currently don’t exist within the Hub organization (such as actuarial services or capabilities in large, complex national risks)?

Culture – “Most importantly, we look for culture,” Osen said. “Is the company aligned with us in terms of their values [and] goals? We don’t want principals that are selling and heading home. We want people that want to be part of our team, that want to help grow this together, that we feel are good people.”

While there are various news stories about the number of acquisitions Hub does, “what never gets published is how many acquisitions we walk aware from each year,” Osen said. “In 99% of the cases, it is because of cultural fit. We just don’t feel that our values align.

“We absolutely will continue to buy if the above three factors are in place.”

Jason Contant

Jason has been an award-winning journalist with Canadian Underwriter for more than a decade, including the past three years as associate editor and, before that, as digital editor for seven years.