Square One Insurance Services

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Square One Insurance Services

Type	Private
ISIN	🆔
Industry	Insurance
Founded 📆	January 2011 Vancouver, Canada
Founder 👔	Chris Bayly, Daniel Mirkovic, and Jason Vander Zalm
Headquarters 🏙️	650 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Area served 🗺️	British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Arizona, Oregon
Products 📟	Home, Condo & Renters Insurance
Members
Number of employees
🌐 Website	https://www.squareoneinsurance.com/
📇 Address
📞 telephone

Square One Insurance Services is a property and casualty insurance provider founded in 2011. Operations began in British Columbia and have since spread across Canada into Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. In 2017, Square One expanded into Arizona, in the United States, followed by Oregon, in 2018.

Unlike traditional brokers who require customers to visit their office, Square One concentrates on simplifying the process of applying for, and purchasing, a home insurance policy through an online and over-the-phone quoting system.

In Canada, the insurance products offered by Square One are underwritten by The Mutual Fire Insurance Company of BC. Mutual Fire was started in 1902 and is based in Langley, British Columbia and is licensed to do business in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. Mutual Fire’s operations are supervised by provincial regulators, with the Financial Institution Commission of British Columbia assuming the lead regulatory role.

In the United States, policies are underwritten by Pacific Specialty Insurance Company.

Pacific Specialty has been in operation for over 30 years. It operates as an “admitted” insurance company across the US, meaning it has met the requirements of government agencies regulating the insurance industry in every state.

History

Square One Insurance Services was founded in Vancouver, BC, and began operations on January  5, 2011.

The founding team consisted of Daniel Mirkovic, Chris Bayly, and Jason Vander Zalm, a group of executives with over 40 years of combined experience in the insurance and technology industries. The three founders had previously worked together at the British Columbia Automobile Association (BCAA).

The founders felt that traditional home insurance wasn’t meeting the needs of most consumers. They believed that most industries – from telecommunications to electronics to banking – had evolved in the last 20 years, but the home insurance industry, on the other hand, hadn’t changed since the 1970s. The idea behind Square One was to provide consumers with comprehensive home and renters insurance coverage at a competitive price, with initial coverage launching only within British Columbia and a larger rollout into the rest of Canada and beyond beginning in 2012.

Square One’s goal was to eliminate unnecessary processes and complexities around traditional home insurance policies and to streamline the customer’s point of purchase with modern technologies. After expanding across Canada, by the middle of 2017, they expanded their operations into the United States, with a new American headquarters established in Phoenix, Arizona. Expansions across the United States are anticipated in the future.

As of December 2018, Square One employs approximately 50 people and has over 50,000 clients across North America.

Leadership

Members of the leadership team include Daniel Mirkovic as the President and CEO, Chris Bayly as the VP of Finance and Underwriting, and Jason VanderZalm as the VP of Information Technology.

Daniel Mirkovic has more than 16 years of experience in high-level positions across the insurance industry. Prior to starting Square One, Daniel was a VP for the British Columbia Automobile Association.

Chris Bayly has been in the financial services and insurance industry for about 17 years. Chris’ experience includes analytics, mergers and acquisitions, reinsurance management, and pricing development.

Jason Vander Zalm has significant experience in the finance and insurance industry, and spent several years at BCAA working in software development, quality assurance, and IT systems.

Products

Square One Insurance Services offers a range of insurance products related to personal property, including:

• Home Insurance
• Townhouse insurance
• Condo insurance
• Tenant Insurance
• Vacation property Insurance
• Semi-attached insurance
• Rental property insurance
• Other types (Log home, short term rental, earthquake, etc.)

All policies offered by Square One are designed to provide a comprehensive form of coverage, protecting policyholders against fire, sewer backup, wind, hail, and many other perils. In Canada, where earthquake and inland (overland) flood coverage is routinely provided by primary insurance providers, all policies offered by the provider include coverage for earthquake, and all eligible policies include coverage for inland flooding.

Square One was one of the first in Canada to offer short-term rental insurance, a directive which was designed to alleviate issues relating to uninsured short-term rental units such as those popularized by Airbnb and other services.

The products offered at Square One Insurance are intended to allow customers to choose the coverages they want or need. Traditional insurance policies calculate a replacement cost for the insured house (or contents in the case of Tenants or Condo owners), and include specific amounts of other coverages, such as Additional Living Expenses, Detached Garage, and so on, based on percentages of the insured dwelling. The founders of Square One felt this was not providing the type of coverage consumers actually required, and the premiums were higher than necessary to cover these add-ons. Therefore, they opted to allow customers to select only the types and amounts of coverage they wanted, and to eliminate those coverages that they did not require.

Advertisements

Square One’s first foray into television advertising was a humorous jab at the way traditional insurance providers operate, entitled “Square One: A packaged "deal" you don't want.”  Because most home insurance policies are packaged to include a number of items that not all customers may need, Square One designed an ad showing a man wishing to purchase a bottle of water at an out-of-the-way service station. The proprietor advises the customer that a bottle of water costs $58.89 because it comes with a gallon of paint, antifreeze, a bag of rock salt, and a chicken. The customer insists he only wants the water, but he is told it comes as a “package deal”. The ad emphasizes the fact that at Square One, customers only pay for the coverage that’s important to them, unlike with traditional insurance providers.

“Square One: Low-cost home insurance in 15 minutes” is the name of the second television advertisement produced by Square One, emphasizing the ease and speed of purchasing a policy online, as well as the lower price due to the fact that customers choose only the types of specialty coverage they need.

Awards

Square One Insurance Services won the ICTA award (Insurance Canada Technology Award) for top distributor in 2013. The award was presented for the development of an integrated CRM (customer relationship management), policy management, billing, and claims management system that allows Square One to offer interactive, real-time quoting of their home insurance product offering on their website.  

Licence and Regulation

Square One Insurance Services is licenced and regulated by the following regulatory bodies:

• Alberta Insurance Council
• Arizona Department of Insurance
• Financial Services Commission of Ontario
• Insurance Council of British Columbia
• Insurance Council of Manitoba
• Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan
• Oregon Division of Financial Regulation

HQ Locations

Currently, Square One’s international headquarters, including the call centre for Canadian operations, is located in downtown Vancouver, BC, Canada.  Their mailing address is:

• Square One Insurance Services, 650 West Georgia Street, Suite 1410, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 4N8.

There are also regional offices for service, located at:

• Calgary: 909 17 Avenue Southwest, 4th Floor, Calgary, Alberta, T2T 0A4
• Ottawa: 343 Preston Street, 11th Floor, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 1N4
• Phoenix: 23460 North 19th Avenue, Suite 125, Phoenix, Arizona, 85027
• Portland: 121 Southwest Salmon Street, 11th Floor, Portland, Oregon, 97204
• Toronto: 439 University Avenue, 5th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1Y8

Logo

The Square One Insurance logo includes the words “square one insurance services” in the corporate colours of gray and orange, next to a stylized orange number 1 surrounded by a gray arrow forming a square.  The logo is designed to indicate that the provider has “gone back to square one” to completely redesign a home insurance product.

Board of Directors

The Square One Board of Directors is comprised of:

• Dejan Mirkovic – Dejan co-founded Cityfone Telecommunications, which was acquired by Rogers Wireless in July 2010. He is the President of Goose Insurance Services, a BC–based travel insurance provider, serving customers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.

• Douglas Mathew - Douglas is a retired partner of Thorsteinssons LLP, Tax Lawyers. He is also a Principal of Comat Mortgage Corporation, a private lending and investment company.
• Scott McBride - Scott is retired from his position as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Consumer Protection British Columbia. Previously, he served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the British Columbia Automobile Association.  

External Links

• Official website

This article "Square One Insurance Services" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Square One Insurance Services. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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