Four years since it went public, Definity Financial Corporation is growing ahead of the market. It is already paying down the leverage which made possible its recent acquisition of the personal insurance business and the majority of the commercial insurance business of the Canadian operations of The Travelers Companies, Inc. It is also in the process of integrating that acquisition to realize the transaction’s benefits.
“It’s a game changer for us,” Definity’s president and CEO, Rowan Saunders told Bart Dziarski, global research diversified financials analyst with RBC Capital Markets in a recent “fireside” presentation for investors. “This is very strategic for us.” He says the company set out to be a top five player in the property and casualty (P&C) space. When it went public, he says Definity was the eighth largest player before growing to number six. “Now number four with this deal. It is a very complementary portfolio.”
$100-million in synergies
After completing the Travelers acquisition ahead of expectations on January 2, 2026, a transaction that Saunders says went very smoothly, he says the plan is to move the $1-billion in personal insurance business from Travelers’ legacy systems, onto Definity’s Vine platform. “Big synergies will come out of that. We get significant commercial product capabilities and talent as well.”
Of the $1-million number, Saunders says the company is very confident.
The acquisition, he says, accelerates the company’s commercial specialty strategy, something it was already working towards, by about five years. It opens up some segments where the company was already doing business, and also gives it access to additional lines, including ocean and marine, financial lines and cyber insurance. He says taking market share in these areas will be material for the company in the coming years. Cross selling alone, expected to commence in the second half of 2027, is expected to give the company a boost, followed by an effort to add product density to its lineup of broker offerings.
The transfer of the company’s business onto the Vine platform is expected to take place, beginning in the middle of 2026, rolling into the middle of 2027. The $100-million in synergies are expected to be extracted over a three-year period.
“We did a lot of due diligence and planning, but now having owned the business for several weeks, I think our confidence level is even higher than what it was. We have a very high confidence level in that $100-million. We know exactly where it’s coming from. A lot of it will come from technology. Some of it will come from cross border governance charges and some will come from operations and productivity,” he says. “We feel very good about that.”
About Vine
The company’s Vine platform, created in the run up to the company going public in 2021, gives it a competitive advantage that Saunders says will only get bigger over time.
He adds that the platform gives the company the ability to deploy new rate segmentation more frequently. “We can use more data that allows us to be better at aggregation management, nimbly transferring technical pricing and segmentation to the front lines,” he says. “We could drive loss ratio improvements. We can avoid anti-selection. This technology platform allows that level of sophistication,” he says.
“It makes the business a lot easier. It influences price elasticity. It’s very easy to just hit a list of renewals and they’re done. We definitely see better new business. We definitely see much higher retention ratios. And the longer the tenure, the higher quality customer, the better the profitability.”
Moving the Travelers business to Vine is expected to improve loss ratios in the coming years. “We know the broker service levels will be better and the expenses are dramatically different,” he adds.
From the broker’s perspective, he says being able to give a client an indication about the price of insurance will help those whose customers may be having a difficult time in the marketplace. “It’s very strategic. It’s one of our big advantages. I like us competing on technology, on service, as opposed to price.”
Talent and retention
Particularly in commercial insurance and specialty insurance, Saunders says talent is difficult to source, making the talents of those who were part of the Travelers acquisition notably valuable.
The biggest risk he says the company faced was losing people who were concerned about their futures on hearing that the Travelers Canadian business would be acquired. Despite those concerns, he says retention efforts have paid off. “Retention has been amazing. We worked really hard on that (using) a multifaceted approach,” he says. “From all the town halls that we’ve been doing in the first month of the business, people are pretty excited to be part of the story.”
Priorities in 2026 and 2027
In addition to retaining talent in the leadup to and following the transaction, Saunders says the company’s other priorities included retaining the acquired business while also continuing to grow Definity’s existing $5-billion business portfolio. “We like the business, therefore retaining it is really important for us,” he says.
As the business moves into 2027, he says the process of transitioning the business will be nearing completion, allowing the company to more actively start marketing, cross selling and developing product opportunities to encourage growth in its specialty lines.
In some specialty verticals, however, he notes the market is uneven in places, particularly in large commercial business where the company is observing more competition for accounts. “That seems to continue,” he says. “We’re growing in the SME space. We’re growing in the specialty space, with a little bit of contraction in some of those large account areas.” He adds that only 15 per cent of the company’s business is exposed to this more competitive landscape – an amount that he says is meaningful, but manageable.
“We’ve slowed our growth in some of those large, more exposed accounts. We’re really focusing on segmentation. We’re really focusing on long-term customers and then we’re redirecting our new business efforts to profit pools that are more attractive. We’re winning on service. We’re winning on specialty where we’ve got a low market share and we’re winning on small commercial.”
He notes that the small commercial space too is less competitive, as it requires modern technology, broad distribution, large claims operations and the right kind of data to operate in the space. “It takes a long time. There are barriers to entry into that segment.”
Generative AI, “pervasive”
The CEO also discussed the company’s partnership with Google to develop its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts. The company, he says, is currently working with Google engineers to test and develop use cases using the company’s 25 years of data. Saunders says the company has 135 predictive models in place and 20 generative AI use cases in development and in force throughout the company. He adds that 70 per cent of Definity’s workforce also uses AI tools to help with personal productivity.
The company is also using generative AI to help prioritise intake, identifying which submissions the company should quote on, given the odds of it winning the business. Agentic AI is also being used for customer contact summaries.
“It helps us with revenue. It helps us with underwriting, with risk selection and it helps the costs and productivity. It helps us with user experience,” he says, later adding that the same is true in claims. “It’s pretty pervasive.”
Praise for the broker
AI is also being used in insurance quotation discovery processes and in administrative tasks by the broker channel.
“I have a lot of confidence in the broker channel. This is a business that has many people calling for its end, many, many times over the last 30 or 40 years. They are bigger, they are stronger, they are more profitable and they are more relevant today than they have been. I think they tend to find a way of being relevant and reinventing themselves. I think that’s the issue here.”
He adds that there are still a significant number of customers who want the advice and counsel of a broker, as their homes or their businesses are often their biggest assets.
“If you’re insuring a business or buying directors and officer’s insurance for a board of directors, I doubt the board is going to say, ‘am I comfortable? Let me ask ChatGPT if I’ve got the right coverage here,’ when there’s billions of dollars in assets at stake,” he says. “I think brokers will have to adapt. They’ll have to invest. I know that many of them are already doing so.”
Going forward, he anticipates further consolidation of that channel. Those who “get it,” who invest, develop and maintain good data will be able to stay relevant. “They’ll just get stronger and stronger. The weak will likely end up being either disintermediated or acquired.”
