Frédéric St-Jean-Mercier | FinTech Magazine
After 20 years of experience in the technology industry – of which 15 have been used in the financial and insurance sectors – Frederic St-Jean Mercier has welcomed the challenges posed by his recent role as CIO at Canada’s most respected MGA.
The Fintech and insurtech expert joined GroupAssur in 2021 and is well versed in the process, and has extensive experience with the transition from traditional technology stacks. He says: “My role is mainly to create value through technology in the organization and promote an innovation culture.”
St-Jean Mercier says GroupAssur has taken a unique approach to its technical transition, in that the teams redesign the business first and then put in place technologies to fit that need afterwards.
“We are actually reconsidering transforming our business model and our operating model based on what we can do with technologies, so I work extremely closely with the other leaders to truly understand their challenges.”
M&A and business strategy
GroupAssur is the largest Canadian-owned non-life insurance MGA in Canada. The company mainly offers a wide range of commercial insurance products, from general liability to real estate. The merger with Evolution Insurance has been a symbiotic feature.
“We had very complementary products, so that made us the number one Canadian-owned MGA in Canada,” says St-Jean Mercier. “Our goal is to create a world-class MGA and expand through the United States.”
Part of this journey is the deployment of new technologies that are set to further enhance GroupAssur’s broad portfolio of commercial products. The innovations add value to brokerage services, and GroupAssur will also be the first MGA in the world to go live on Guidewire – the world-renowned cloud-based P&C platform for insurance companies.
St-Jean Mercier explains: “Most MGAs are pretty niche. Usually they offer special products that they have to represent. We are different because we represent most domestic insurance companies, and we do this across several different insurance products – which we design – and we enter into partnerships with them.
“This gives us a very wide, diversified range of insurance products we can offer, and gives us the opportunity to tailor very complex risks that most insurance companies could not or would not cover on their own.”
New horizons for GroupAssur
The future is certainly bright for this forward-looking company that has embraced innovations and technologies, not only to run its own processes, but to transform the offerings of its stakeholders and customers as well. A transition to the US marketplace is also on the cards.
“Looking to the future, the three focus areas for us will be to complete the transformation we are already well into and then swing to become a technology-driven insurance company. After that, we want to leverage innovations to revolutionize commercial insurance and the MGA industry. It is our primary focus for the future, in addition to consolidating our leadership in Canada. “
The move to the USA is another big step, and an expansion that is being actively worked on. St-Jean adds: “We want to expand it to a point where we become inaccessible to competitors. We are actively looking for other MGAs in the US who want to bring their expertise to us, while bringing our technology and expertise to them. “The United States is a very important milestone for us in the future.”
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