Come together

Sometimes four heads are better than one.

At least that’s the thinking behind Lynx, a new collaboration that pits four local, synergistic companies together that company officials hope will not only strengthen their own businesses, but also provide a more comprehensive risk management strategy to companies throughout Northwestern Ontario.

“The four of us have informally worked together for years for business back and forth,” said Jed Ziegler, a registered health underwriter with Thunder Bay’s Focused WealthCare Insurance Services.

“What we wanted to do was to put a face to that that clients can recognize and see the depth of resources that we’ve collected.

“If you’re dealing with one of these four partners, that partner has access to Thunder Bay Insurance’s commercial experience, Safety Net Security’s security experience, our employee benefits experience and Buset and Partner’s legal experience.”

The partnership comes at a key economic time for the region, as mining is starting to boom. First Nations and the construction industry are also key categories they plan to target. The idea is to convince businesses to not pass by Thunder Bay in favour of other parts of the province.

 “We’re seeing a lot kinds of risk services and risk management type of expertise circumventing Thunder Bay altogether,” said Thunder Bay Insurance’s Adrien Ladouceur. “For example, a lot of the stuff for mining is actually in the Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. A lot of the transportation is either out of Manitoba or out of the States.

“If we can show the world that Northwestern Ontario has the expertise, has the experience, has the infrastructure to really control the risk, we’re going to be able to attract more activity, more funds. There’s going to be more success for everybody involved. This is what our ultimate goal is.”


Under the old way of doing things, an insurance firm like Ladouceur’s would simply sell a company a protection policy, and might mention potential security holes where a business might be vulnerable. It would be up to the customer to deal with the result.

Now, Ladouceur said, it might be a matter of a simple call to one of the partner companies, who could meet the security needs, saving the customer time, and possibly money through lower insurance premiums.

“When it comes to managing risk, traditionally these different areas would do their best in their own little areas and silos to try to help businesses control risk, be it security, be it legal matters or insurance. But we found that working together and synergizing the services that we have creates a much stronger work environment,” Ladouceur said.

The collaboration has been formalized to educate businesses and employees about potential risks to set up shop. One of the ways they plan to do this is to bring in outside experts, the first of whom is author Robert Rail, who teaches effective communication and proper use of body language.

Rail, who has consulted for the United Nations, will be in the city on Nov. 14 and 15 at the Valhalla Inn. More information about the event can be found at www.lynxbusinessprotection.com.