COME the end of June this year, Richard Burgher, the executive chairman of Marathon Insurance Brokers, will step down from that role and go into “retirement”, but for him, it is not the end of an era, but rather the beginning of a new one as he approaches the age of 80.

Having started Marathon Insurance Brokers in 1990, Burgher has 33 years of experience under his belt in the insurance business, building an entity from scratch to being one of the biggest insurance brokers in the country “and certainly the most technologically advanced”, Burgher boasts.

“I knew nothing about insurance when we started in 1990. All I had was an idea involving a couple of people.”

Burgher said he took the idea to “a former minister of government with whom I was very good friends, and we thought that, look, financial services is one of the better businesses to go into… and we went into it in 1990”.

By training, Burgher is an accountant, but said he always felt he should not be restricted to that profession.

“I believe I’m an entrepreneur at heart. So I’ve always been in the retail business and the importation business. And I’ve tried my hands at many things,” Burgher told the Jamaica Observer as he reflected on his working life from his first job in 1962 at Raymond International as an accountant. That company, which is based in the US, was responsible for building the Kingston-Spanish Town highway in the 1970s. That highway is now called the Mandela Highway. “It was the first real highway we had in the country,” Burgher said.

From Raymond International, he said he went to Commodity Services Limited, the entity known today as Facey Commodity Limited, and then onto the now-defunct Homelectrix, an appliance retailer.

But being an entrepreneur at heart, Burgher was never going to be still, sitting at a desk, crunching numbers all day and, after a decade of work, he went on his own in 1973 to start his first business.

That business was called Eats Limited, under which four entities operated, all in the food services industry, as the name suggests. Under that brand he had restaurants such as Forum Cafeteria at Twin Gates Plaza on Constant Spring Road, in St Andrew, and Knutsford Cafeteria, both of which had buffet-style lunches. He also did catering through Forum Catering Services — serving weddings and company lunches, and also imported meats which were sold into the wholesale trade.

A decade later in 1983, the entrepreneurial bug bit again and Burgher left the restaurant business to purchase a food processing entity at Poor Man’s Corner in Yallahs, St Thomas called B-Barts Corporation, which produced ready-to-eat meals under the Caribbean Kitchens brand. That entity produced a range of foods such as curried goat, ackee and salt fish, stew peas, beef stew, mackerel rundown and white rice which could be quickly warmed for a meal in a vacuum-sealed package.

“Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 caused that business to close…two years later…Marathon was started,” he recounted to Sunday Finance. At the time, he said he was still importing meat, onions and red kidney beans in 40-foot containers that were sold straight to large customers such as “the GraceKennedys of this world”.

But he said it was his encounter with insurers dealing with his claim for losses at B-Barts which influenced his entry into Marathon.

“We got exposed to the insurance process, and we pretty much got paid out after the hurricane, but we saw that over 90 per cent of the businesses in the industrial park where we operated either did not get any compensation because they didn’t have any insurance or were underinsured and that led us to set up Marathon. We wanted people to have insurance to recover from catastrophe the same way we were able to recover after Gilbert.”

That pay-out was used to clear debts with the bank, and Burgher continued his import business, still wanting to set up the insurance business he was now dreaming about.

Starting the business, for him, after the conversation with his friend, was a no-brainer. Even the name of the company was suggested by the friend who had in fact registered it before and gave it to Burgher to use. That friend was a shareholder in the company in the early days.

“Once you get into the insurance business, you have a couple hurdles. The first thing is money, naturally. You have to qualify to meet the minimum capital standards, so I put a group of friends together to raise that money. Then you will have to meet the regulatory requirements. And once you’ve met those two, you have to locate somewhere and then you’re hitting the road,” Burgher pointed out.

The minimum capital necessary at the time was $1 million. Friends and family contributed 75 per cent of the sum and Burgher found the rest. Then he had to find someone with insurance qualifications. Having done that, on November 1, 1990 with four employees, Marathon Insurance Brokers was launched.

“Then we had to hit the road, literally,” Burgher said. “I mean, it is going to friends and families, and trying to get business from them is a slog. It’s not advertising like you have it these days where you spend millions of dollars on advertising. It is going from door-to-door, from people-to-people asking them to do business with you. We literally walked around, literally looking at a particular home and when we see a particular nice home and or car, then we knock on the door and sell them the insurance for those products.”

He doesn’t recall his first client, but said that, though business was slow in the first days, the company was competitive. It adopted the tag line “Leave the worry to us”, indicating to people that all they had to do was take out a policy with Marathon and in the event of a catastrophe, they would get what was due.”We allowed people to have peace of mind,” he said.

As the market grew to trust the young company, so too did business.

“The journey has been from individual lines where we were dealing with just personal assets owned by individuals to now where we’re dealing with assets owned by major corporations and major government institutions. We cover some of the largest risks in Jamaica right now,” he said.

That has pushed Marathon Insurance Brokers’ insurance premiums north of $3 billion today, which makes it a relatively large insurance broker, big enough to deal directly with some of the bigger reinsurers such as Willis Re and a global broker Meridian RSL.

Now, as he reflects on the last 33 years, he speaks with a sort of satisfaction that comes from knowing one has achieved.

“The 33 years that we have been in business with Marathon has been a good experience and we have done well. We have a company that is financially solid. We are considered one of the larger insurance brokerages in the Caribbean,” he said.

“We were the first company to get rid of filing cabinets,” he said. The company turned then to storing customers files on microfilms which allowed the customer experience to be faster and more efficient.

“As a matter of fact, we had insurance companies that will call us instead of going to their file with us [and ask] us to look at our records and provide them with insurance, customer information.”

Then in 2019, the company made another move along the technology path, being the first to introduce online insuring, allowing clients to buy insurance without setting foot in an office.

Most of these are motor vehicle insurance.

“We concentrate on motor because it’s 50 per cent of the Jamaican market representing nearly $35 billion.” Burgher said his company had $1 billion of that market “which means we have lot of way to go, growing in that market”. The company does sales of $3.7 billion each year.

“In the back end, what the customer does not see is that we communicate all the paperwork automatically to the insurance company. We no longer handle people with an insurer; we are the only company that does that,” he said, indicating that with the average motor vehicle premium being about $30,000 “from which you make about $4,000 profit”, automation works best to reduce costs and drive efficiency.

But having been in insurance for almost 33 years and now nearing retirement, how does Burgher see his industry?

“I don’t want to be unkind, but I don’t think the insurance people in Jamaica are very innovative and they don’t invest a lot in technology, though recently a few companies have started to look to technology,” Burgher said.

He however said they all must start to prepare for technological innovations such as electric vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI), which will change the way people conduct business.

“For example, in the future we may have claims being sorted by AI instead of humans, which will reduce risks. There is a plethora of innovations that will force the industry to reassess the way it does business,” he noted.

He also said the industry must prepare for new ways of underwriting risks.

“The idea of driving your motor vehicle, paying insurance because you have had a couple of accidents in the past, and therefore your insurance premium is higher than the other guy, is not going to be a consideration when you have an automated driving vehicle. It will change how we underwrite risks.”

Another aspect the public could see is self-insurance which would become more popular. Just in time insurance where the customer only pays for insurance when the vehicle is in operation rather than when it is parked.

“Individually assess risks is another one to come. The insurers will have to take on the risk of an individual rather than group everyone based on various factors such as age, the type of car, and so on. The risk profile will be more individualistic,” he said.

Changing from his outlook on the industry, what exactly does Burgher plan to do in retirement?

For starters, he remains with Marathon Insurance Brokers as the non-executive chairman. But most of all, he said he wants to contribute in a different way to society.

“I’ve always wanted to teach poor people pickney to create wealth. Every time I sit down and think about these inner-city economic projects where people are telling people, for example, to buy and rear chicken to sell. That’s 40 years ago. I want to put together a group of people who will put money in inner-city businesses. Entities set up to make profits. Build enterprises that look first-class with small entrepreneurs. That’s what I will be spending most of my time doing, outside of meetings and taking some time to enjoy my retirement years,” he said.

For him, Marathon Insurance Brokers is now at the start of a new journey. Burgher is to be replaced by Levar Smith, who will take the reins as president and CEO on July 1, 2023.

“We are going to be a large retail player in the region by employing technology,” Burgher told Sunday Finance when asked about where he sees his company in the next few years. But he said that is the mandate of the new man to take charge later this year.

“Keep your ears to the ground; we will soon have huge announcements to make. We will be using some of our huge reserves to make some investments,” Burgher concluded.