The Costen Insurance Management Team had the pleasure of attending this year’s IBAA (Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta) convention in Banff, Alberta from Sunday, May 5th to Wednesday, May 8th. The convention, which was held at the beautiful Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, had an “eXperience” theme.
As in previous years, the convention was packed full of informative seminars and fun events.
The convention officially kicked off on Sunday with a cancelled golf tournament, thanks to yet another spring snow! The afternoon included several educational seminars, followed by cocktails with Echelon Insurance and a Disco Themed get together with our friends at Peace Hills Insurance.
Monday morning started with a delicious breakfast followed by the keynote speaker, Andrew Au, who spoke about “The Broker of 2030”. The remainder of the day was filled with seminars discussing the current economic cycle and the insurance marketplace.
In the evening we attended the President’s Gala in which the new IBAA President, Vicki Livingstone, was officially inducted. We had the pleasure of sitting with some of our Insurer partners, including Pembridge and RSA Insurance. Dinner was followed by some interesting entertainment.
Tuesday morning started off with a great buffet breakfast with our friends at Peace Hills Insurance, and seminars discussing the digitization of brokerages.
After a very busy morning, we wandered the trade show and visited with all of the different company representatives. We also tossed a business card or two into some draws. Both Crista and Andrew were lucky this year and won prizes! Andrew won a Chromecast from Nirix and Crista won a Westjet gift card from Echelon.
Tuesday evening we attended the hospitality night and enjoyed some Moose Milk (yum!) and good food. We also popped by the Pembridge photo booth for some photo fun.
This year, there were educational seminars held on the Wednesday as well. We attended a session on “The Insurance-Customer Life Cycle”, “Embracing Digital Tech in Insurance” and “Closing the Gap, Cross-selling and Up-selling”.
As in previous years, we really enjoyed mingling with our fellow Brokers and all of our Insurance Company partners. We took away some great new information and ideas to apply to our business, and most of all, we had a wonderful time in beautiful Banff!
As always, if you have any questions regarding our Brokerage, your policy, or how we can assist you, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would love to hear from you!
The Costen Insurance Team
