With Rorie McIntosh, President, McCAM Insurance
CELEBRATING BROKERAGES WHO’VE BEEN WITH US FOR A CENTURY
WHAT SHOULD WE KNOW ABOUT MCCAM?
We’re based out of Oshawa, ON. We’ve always been in the City of Oshawa, and in fact we’ve been here longer than the city itself—Oshawa became a city in 1924. McCAM Insurance started out as McMurty Insurance. In the first 25 years we were open, we survived World War One, The Spanish Flu, The Great Depression and then World War Two. It became McCAM when it merged with three other brokerages in 1971. Colin McIntosh, my father, joined McCAM Insurance in 1978 and he bought out the other partners as they retired. He sold the business to me in 2004. As a company, and a family run business, giving back to the community is important. Our family has given over $1,000,000 to local charities. We focus on working with the right clients and rely mainly on referrals—there are clients who have been with us for over 50 years.
HOW ARE YOU CELEBRATING YOUR 100TH?
Well, we’ve decided the best way to celebrate if you cannot be with your friends and customers, is to innovate. Focus on the company more and celebrate with friends once isolation is not needed. We’ve been watching tech trends, and we’re are at the point where—with some extra time on our hands now—we can finally pull the trigger on some tech to make the customer experience even better.
HOW HAS THE BROKERAGE EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS?
We focused on personal lines a lot for the first one hundred years. That has changed. We’re more focused on commercial than ever. In the last few years we have branched out into commercial lines niches, such as entertainment insurance, and we a few more niches rolling out this year. We’re also embracing digital tools that allow our staff to have more time to focus on what the client sees a value.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS?
My main objective is to leave the firm in at least the same shape as I got it. Or better. We are focused on strategic acquisitions that give us more leverage, more options, more markets. The biggest challenge is adapting to the changes in technology and their impact on society. We cannot foresee all of the changes that are coming, but in the end one thing remains constant: relationships. Even with the multitude of ways a client can communicate with us, the thing that always comes back is personal relationships. Clients want that. They want to know there is a person at the other end of that phone or on the other side of that desk making suggestions based on experience.