95 years in the making

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This article was published 22/07/2015 (3987 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s biggest privately held company will never be accused of moving too quickly on Wynward Insurance Group.

Ninety-five years after being one of 40 charter members of the Grain Insurance Guarantee Company — the precursor to Wynward — James Richardson & Sons Limited has acquired a 100 per cent stake in the Winnipeg-based firm.

After slowly building up its shares in GIGC until it became the majority owner, Dave Finnbogason, vice-president of corporate development at JRSL, said the time had come to consider going all in. So, it contacted the three other minority partners, Parrish & Heimbecker, Paterson Global Foods and Cargill Ltd., and they all agreed.

“When you have four shareholders in there, it’s a little blip on everybody’s screen. We’re already in the financial-services business,” he said.

GIGC was founded in 1920 as a joint venture of Prairie grain elevator owners who were having a dispute with their Eastern Canadian insurance company about their premiums. Ever the entrepreneurs, they decided to form their own company and self-insure.

The rebranding three years ago included coming up with a name. “Wyn” means “fair and reasonable” in Old English while “ward” means “guardian” or protector.

“Our brand was hurting us in the market. People thought we (sold) crop insurance,” said Darryl Levy, its president and CEO.

Today, Wynward has carved out a niche as a commercial insurance provider, but it doesn’t do automotive or home insurance.

“We’re very specific and very surgical in our market. We’re a business to serve other businesses,” Levy said. “That can include a strip mall, a half-billion-dollar grain terminal and large office buildings to churches, pharmacies and well-known business franchises in Canada.”

“We have a very specialized market niche. We’re not the Walmart of insurance. We’re a specialist to insure other businesses in Canada.”

Over the last four years, Wynward has doubled its revenue to become a $100-million business, Levy said.

“We price risk for a living. When we have someone come to us with an apartment building or shopping centre, we say, ‘Here’s the premium to pay for us to insure the risk from property damage or stoppage of business,’ ” he said.

Wynward has regional offices in Regina, London and Halifax and 76 employees. It insures more than 34,000 policyholders and more than $40 billion in property assets across Canada. Its products are distributed through a network of 500 brokers across the country.

“We like what has happened in the last four years. Many people thought it was a company that insured crops,” Finnbogason said.

“We’re pretty excited about it. We can work more closely with (Levy) and his team and plug them into JRSL. We think there’s a lot of potential there.”

Finnbogason said it has asked Wynward to present both a one-year and longer-term plan — just as it asks every other company under its umbrella — and from there it will determine what kind of investment might be needed to allow the company to reach its maximum growth potential.

“There’s a lot of heavy lifting that needs to be done. Even without pumping more money into it, (Wynward) has a nice organic growth trajectory,” he said.

JRSL has interests in the international grain trade and agri-food business, as well as energy, real estate and financial services.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca