Seasoned skipper

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This article was published 17/05/2021 (1079 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Eric Herbelin’s road to Winnipeg as the new boss of MPI began in a mountain village in Switzerland, where he was born, with pit stops on six continents.

At age 46, he already has 30 years of experience in the insurance business, having started as an apprentice at the tender age of 16.

Before becoming Manitoba Public Insurance’s president and CEO earlier this year, Herbelin worked in small insurance companies and for large conglomerates. He also built an insurance company from scratch. Along the way, he continued his education, earning a pair of master’s degrees, including an MBA.

Herbelin worked as a claims adjuster and an underwriting manager before taking on a series of management and executive roles that took him around the world. Before joining MPI in January, he was president and CEO of Elips Life Insurance Co., the Chicago-based subsidiary of a Swiss company.

MPI, though, with close to 2,000 employees and $4 billion in assets, is the largest corporation over which he’s had direct control.

In an interview this week, Herbelin said he’s looking to put down roots in the Manitoba capital.

He and his wife Olia are fond of the outdoors. He’s a French-speaking Swiss and his partner is from Ukraine. They feel that Winnipeg, given its cultural make-up, is a good fit.

“For the next 10 years, I can very well imagine being at MPI and in Manitoba,” he said. “The environment is fantastic. We love the nature; the people are nice.”

Herbelin’s arrival at the helm of Manitoba’s public auto insurer comes at a challenging time for the corporation. While it’s been fairly successful at keeping premium rates low, it has been slow to offer basic insurance services online. It’s also had a confrontational relationship with brokers and is now butting heads with car repair and autobody shops.

The new MPI boss will be overseeing a four-year, $100-million investment to modernize the corporation’s computer platforms, which will also allow it to offer consumers a variety of online purchase options within two years.

Herbelin said he believes one of the reasons he was chosen for the CEO’s job is his experience in guiding such important technical transformations.

“I know that these projects can very quickly derail,” he said. “And I think that the advantage that I bring to the job is at least I understand what the risks are, what the pitfalls are.”

While MPI has locked horns in the past with the Insurance Brokers Association of Manitoba, Herbelin said he plans to take a “more collaborative approach” in the corporation’s dealings with the lobby group.

Just before the new CEO took over, MPI negotiated a new five-year deal with IBAM that will see insurance brokers receive a commission from all online Autopac renewals when modernized service delivery becomes available in 2023. The deal, reached with the help of a government-appointed conciliator, is controversial because it will pay brokers a fee for online sales in which they do no work.

Asked if such a system is sustainable, Herbelin chose his words carefully. Brokers play an important role in the sale of Autopac services, he said, and will for the foreseeable future. It’s still unclear what percentage of Manitobans will want to purchase insurance policies and driver’s licences online once they’re able to do so, he said.

Technology and consolidation are affecting the insurance broker industry, just as it is in other economic areas, and it’s not up to MPI to “determine the future” of a given industry or sector, Herbelin said.

“For now, we’re not able to provide online services so it is fair that we continue having an agreement with them that gives them the prospective of having continued revenue streams. What happens in five years I don’t know,” he said of the conclusion of the current deal with IBAM.

MPI is currently on a collision course with associations representing auto repair shops. A two-year agreement lapsed in April, and the two sides have so far failed to sign a new one. MPI has since begun negotiating with individual shops.

Herbelin said the repair industry is asking for a 60 per cent increase over current compensation rates that would, if granted, add more than 10 per cent to the cost of Manitobans’ Autopac premiums. He said MPI has no intention of meeting that demand, although it is prepared to boost rates to autobody shops to cover inflation. He said Manitoba already has the second-most generous compensation package (next to Saskatchewan) for repair shops in Canada.

Unlike with MPI’s past disagreement with brokers, the Pallister government has stayed out of the dispute, Herbelin said.

The brokers were facing a looming change to their business model with the advent of online sales, but that’s not the situation with the auto repair shops, he said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca