HERE - BFL CANADA

A NATIONAL PUBLICATION
12,000 COPIES • INSURANCE PEOPLE COAST TO COAST
MAY 2013
Publications Agreement #40027261
Dreaming big
Then there
were three
Joining forces
Thunder in
the east
Follow
the Leader
How Barry Lorenzetti built an employee-owned powerhouse
Market Finder starts page 25
COVER STORY
BFL’s Hockey
Canada account put
the company on the
national scene and
remains its largest
contract. It provides
general liability and
accidental death
and dismemberment
insurance for more
than half a million
amateur hockey
players, coaches
and trainers.
In 1987, still wincing from
a bad job experience,
Montreal’s Barry Lorenzetti
(pictured) and a few partners
started a brokerage with
borrowed furniture. Today
BFL CANADA is proudly
independent. Its $400 million
in annual premium volume
and 400 employees staffing
nine branches make it the
largest employee-owned
and operated commercial
insurance brokerage in
the country. Last year, in
recognition of what industry
insiders have known for
years, the CIP Society
named Lorenzetti an
Established Leader.
B
arry Frederick
Lorenzetti is a
self-made man,
a heavy hitter
among Canada’s
insurance elite.
He is the majority
owner of Montreal-based BFL CANADA, the largest employee-owned and
operated commercial insurance brokerage and consulting service in the
country, with 400 employees and $400
million in annual premium volume.
The size of the business and Lorenzetti’s lifestyle belie his humble roots.
He grew up in the Montreal workingclass neighbourhood of Ville Émard,
one of three children. His father Henry
was a first-generation Canadian of
Italian heritage who started out as a
carpenter but then made his living delivering milk door-to-door. Lorenzetti’s
stay-at-home mother Violet was Irish.
Peter Bregg photo
By Ron Shorvoyce
Follow
the
leader
“She was a very tough woman, and
we were raised with a lot of character.
Although my father spoke three languages (English, French and Italian), my
mother ran the household. Growing up
we learned to speak only English. I didn’t
learn French until I was in high school.”
His father instilled the work ethic in
Lorenzetti. Work hard and play hard.
While attending high school Lorenzetti
helped his dad with the milk route every
Saturday. To help pay for music lessons,
he also earned money during the summers pumping gas
and working in
restaurants.
“I took up percussion and then
guitar. Later in life I
studied piano.”
After graduatHalley
ing Verdun High
School in the early
1970s, Lorenzetti attended McGill University. He had to drop out in his third
year to help support the family when his
father suffered a massive heart attack.
“My dad recuperated and went back
to work, and I continued my education
at night. My mother was responsible for
getting me into insurance. She noticed an
ad in the Montreal Star, where university
students could apply to J.H. Minet & Co.
They would have an opportunity to work
for six months or so at a Lloyd’s brokerage in London.”
Lorenzetti got the job and was able
to extend his stay in London to a year.
While he says he didn’t really learn much
about the Lloyd’s market, he did make
a number of lasting friendships, and he
remained with J.H. Minet in Montreal
for seven years. He did learn about
professional liability insurance and often
travelled to New York to deal with the
company’s American clients. He also became its first Canadian officer, a position
customarily filled by Brits.
“It was great working at J.H. Minet;
there was a family atmosphere. I learned
the special lines insurance business.”
In 1978 Lorenzetti went to work with
Marsh Canada, remaining for three years.
In the early ’80s he joined the Quebec operation of Tomenson Saunders
Whitehead, a private firm, working on
large risk management accounts. After
six years with TSW (later Sedgewick
Canada) he was set to become the company’s Eastern Canada vp.
“It was a private, totally independent firm, which was key for me. It later
changed ownership and became public. I
had a falling-out with management and
left in 1987, very disgruntled.”
In retrospect it was probably the best
thing he ever did. The experience gave
him the impetus to start his own operation.
“I always dreamed about building a
Canadian powerhouse, something a little
different that catered to its employees,
giving key staffers a chance at ownership,
subject to certain criteria.”
Six months after leaving Sedgewick,
Lorenzetti and a couple of partners established B.F. Lorenzetti and Associates,
later known as BFL.
“We started with borrowed furniture.
We had an investment from a Lloyd’s
brokerage firm. We stuck it out, and it all
started to fall into place. At the end of the
first year we had 12 people.”
BFL wanted to be recognized as a
player in the Montreal marketplace as
quickly as possible, Lorenzetti says. Its
first target was public sector business,
specifically municipal cover.
“There were maybe one or two players
in that area, so we went out and got a
team together and started competing. I
used my contacts at Lloyd’s to put some
programs together. We also got a team
of brokers together for the film and entertainment industry. There was no one
else doing that. Within a five-year period
we became known as a niche broker. We
were basically in the top three or four in
those industries.”
Today BFL is in a league of its own.
It has offices in nine Canadian cities –
Vancouver, Kelowna, Calgary, Winnipeg,
Toronto, Ottawa,
Montreal, Quebec
City and Halifax. It
also does business
internationally and
has an extensive array of products and
services, including
Oxbury
risk management
protection, employee benefits and consulting services.
Philippe Halley of Montreal, vp corporate accounting and control for Caisse
de dépôt et placement du Québec, has
known Lorenzetti since 1998.
“Barry gives us good service,” he says.
“We’re a big firm and we have a lot of
insurance with BFL. The company is very
close to their clients, and they know the
business their clients are in. Barry is a
real entrepreneur. He’s the number one
private broker in Quebec.”
Tom Oxbury, vp finance for Coquitlam, B.C.’s Natural Factors, a manufacturer and distributor of food products,
has been associated with BFL and Loren-
zetti for about four years.
“He has a great passion for what he
does,” Oxbury says. “The entrepreneurial
spirit is alive and well in him. Barry
has instilled the desire of client care in
his people. The health food industry is
a tough market to insure, but BFL has
served us very well.”
Perhaps Lorenzetti’s proudest business
accomplishment has been its Hockey
Canada account. BFL landed it in 1996. It
comprises general liability and accidental
death and dismemberment insurance for
more than half a million amateur hockey
players, coaches and trainers. It put the
company on the national scene and
remains BFL’s largest contract.
BFL has key management people in
place to ensure the success of the company. Jacques Dufresne has responsibility
for BFL in Eastern Canada; John Wright
looks after Western Canada. Lorenzetti’s
role these days is to look for growth opportunities. Since the beginning there’s
VITAL STATS
• A single parent, Lorenzetti has three
adult children – Maggie, 23; Justin,
21; and Jenna, 18. Maggie and Justin
are attending Queen’s University in
Kingston, Ont. Jenna is in Grade 12.
• The CIP Society recognized him as a
2012 Established Leader.
• He travels via his own private jet,
a Hawker Beechcraft Premier 1A,
which he doesn’t fly himself.
• He plays guitar and sings with a
couple of bands about three or
four times a year. “One is a Beatles tribute band called Reply. The
other band is The Fundamentals.”
Lorenzetti is also involved with a
company that produces plays and
musicals.
• He considers himself shy. “I think
through things pretty carefully
before I approach people.”
• Lorenzetti owns a dozen classic cars.
His favourite is a 1962 Mercedes
190SL convertible.
• He played a lot of hockey when he
was young and is now on the board
of the Hockey Canada Foundation.
• He considers himself a fair golfer. He
also enjoys tennis.
• His brother Don and sister Gloria
both live in Montreal. “My brother
is a martial arts instructor, a fifth
dan black belt in the Shito-ryu style
of karate. He’s worked with some
Olympic athletes. My sister is a
work-at-home mom.” IW
been an established succession plan in
place through ownership opportunities
for top employees.
“We have shareholders in our operating companies right across the country,” Lorenzetti says. “They graduate to
become shareholders in our holding
company, First Lion (named after BFL’s
lion head logo). Once they attain that
goal they have ownership in all of our
operating companies across the country.
I’m proud to say we have over 30 First
Lion shareholders today.”
Lorenzetti says the long-term goal is to
ensure BFL remains independent.
“We have a responsibility to our young
From the March 2013 edition of
employees who bought into the company
and the model we set up, and they will
not be betrayed. We don’t have any loans
or ties to insurance companies. We’re
completely independent. We’ve been
fighting long and hard to introduce the
definition of an independent insurance
brokerage in Canada.” IW