Heather Masterson—President & CEO, Travelers Canada
At the start of every new year, our entire Travelers Canada team comes together to talk about our business and priorities for the year ahead. These town hall meetings not only keep us connected to each other, they keep us connected to our vision: to be the undeniable choice for customers and an indispensable partner for our brokers.
Our 1,400 employees come to work every day to fulfill our Travelers Promise to take care of our brokers, customers, communities and each other. This means giving customers the security they need to invest in their families and businesses, and helping them recover after the storm. We know how important it is to have people and services you can rely on when the unexpected happens and we believe our response to catastrophic events is the best in the industry. No matter the circumstance—a pandemic, severe weather or a natural disaster—you can count on us to be there.
Last year, against the backdrop of a global pandemic, we continued to provide vital services with minimal disruption, keeping both our employees and customers safe. As the needs of our brokers changed, we pivoted. From virtual claim management and risk inspections, to re-underwriting operations responding to the needs of the pandemic—such as hotels becoming short term hospitals, and distillers manufacturing PPE—to providing two rounds of auto premium relief to more than 250,000 customers, totalling almost $20M in premium refunds. And we accelerated a portion of the additional compensation brokers receive under our Contingent Profit Commission program to ease the financial burden created by the pandemic.
Over the past 18 months, we have made hundreds of systems enhancements, streamlined workflows, and introduced dozens of new tools to deliver a more competitive value proposition. And we are continuing to deliver a steady stream of innovative new products and services, such as adjusting CAT events with the support of our drone fleet, our virtual home and auto inspections, Travelers OPTIMA® for Small Business, launch of our new project loss insurance product, and IntelliDrive, the market-leading UBI tool we introduced in January. We also recently updated our Travelers Canada website to make it easier for consumers to find and connect with one of our broker partners.
We continue to leverage the full scale of the broader Travelers organization to create a business that is locally relevant, competitive and profitable. This includes an ambitious innovation agenda focused on extending our advantage in claim and risk expertise, developing new platforms and products, improving our overall efficiency, and creating great experiences for our brokers and customers.
As we look to the year ahead, we do so with a renewed sense of optimism. We are building on our Travelers OPTIMA for Small Business platform to include new specialty lines products, including cyber, and more self-serve options for business clients. And we are continuing to develop our Optima home and residential flood products. Most importantly, we will continue to invest in our broker channel, so we can grow our businesses together.
Whether it’s helping you navigate challenges or plan for the future, we are ready to support you, your customers and our communities. It’s a responsibility and privilege we don’t take lightly, and one that’s at the heart of the promise we make with every policy we sell—to be there when you need us. That’s been our mission here in Canada for over 130 years, and backed by the strength and stability of Travelers, you can count on us to be there for the next 130.