All it takes is a quick glance around Corry Collins’s central Halifax office to understand what drives him. The owner of Living Benefits Atlantic Ltd. is a devout family man, a successful insurance and financial advisor and an avid motorcyclist.

On the credenza to the left of his large mahogany desk are a series of framed photos of Collins’s family: his wife, Susan, and his three teenaged children — John, Cassy and Miranda. On the wall behind the desk is a framed sheet of $1 bills, part of the Royal Canadian Mint’s last printing before the introduction of the loonie. On the credenza to the right are a half-dozen miniature metal motorcycles, far enough from the edge for safety but close enough to make it interesting.

He is fond of saying: “I work hard for money, harder for the things money will buy and hardest for the things money can’t buy.”

Indeed, it is the last that drove Collins, 44, into the insurance business and keeps him there today. In a way, he is following in the footsteps of his father, who worked as an insurance rep in Halifax. Collins not only learned about the business from his dad, he learned about the importance of insurance after his father suffered several heart attacks.

Collins got his start as a sales rep with London Life Insurance Co. in Halifax in 1986. After three years in sales, he moved into management, taking a position in the company’s London, Ont., head office. But, in 1992, he decided the time was right to build his own practice selling London Life products and so his young family moved back to Halifax. That same year he shifted gears one more time, honing his financial planning business to focus on a niche market — physicians. Disability and critical illness insurance, he knew, would get him in the door; stellar service would keep him there. Today, Collins’s practice, Living Benefits Atlantic, has more than 450 physician clients.

“It’s a full-time practice,” says Collins. “I target myself to that audience. My focus is on building my brand.”

Essential to building that brand is running the practice as a business. Many advisors endorse the philosophy that growth comes with serving the middle- and upper-income earners, especially the latter. But many advisors don’t put the philosophy into practice, offering their services to whomever comes in the door, Collins notes.

“An agent’s income is going to be the same as his or her average client’s,” he says. He targeted doctors because they tend to be high-income earners and no one else was taking care of them.

Collins began looking after his new clients by learning to talk with them, and learning about the challenges they face. Doctors have special financial planning needs, Collins has learned. They generally work longer hours than most Canadians and don’t have pension plans, for example. They spend more years in university and retire earlier, limiting the number of years they can contribute to RRSPs.

“If you’re trying to target a market, you need to be comfortable with [the individuals in that market],” he says.

For Collins, that doesn’t mean being able to talk about medicine. It means showing physicians that in his own way Collins is as much a specialist as they are. “They see me as an expert,” he says simply.

Part of that comes from the four designations he holds: registered health underwriter, certified financial planner, chartered life underwriter and chartered financial consultant. “I got all the designations to convince [the physicians],” Collins says. “Then you do a good job, you keep your nose clean and you become referable.”

His way into the doctors’ offices was via disability insurance, a necessity for many physicians because few are covered by company medical plans. “Now I’m dealing with everything from financial management to tax advantage insurance,” he says.

Once his practice was launched, Collins worked hard at keeping existing business as well as growing. “Staying in touch with clients is the biggest thing,” he says.

And stay in touch he does. Each year, Collins sends a client survey to all his clients. The survey tells him how their financial needs or situations may have changed. It also reminds clients that Living Benefits Atlantic is always working to meet their needs. On a more personal scale, Collins sends each client a birthday card each year, something he says too few financial planners and advisors do today.

@page_break@Collins also connects with his clients’ accountants and bankers, taking care of those little details that can eat up so much time. “I try to do things that make it easier for clients,” he says.

Marketing is also central to Collins’s success — and that marketing is geared 100% to physicians. “People don’t buy insurance,” he says. “It has to be sold. But if you market right, people will call.”

He advertises in publications that doctors read; he promotes his services in venues in which doctors are found. His most recent advertising initiative involves placing poster-sized ads in all the elevators in all 10 buildings of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, the largest adult academic hospital in Atlantic Canada. The reason for the campaign: every physician in the hospital has to step into an elevator at least once a day.

Not all that long ago, some of those physicians were on their way to see Collins the patient. In late December 2003, Collins was stricken with a life-threatening virus that shut down his organs and put him in a coma for almost five days. He was on life support. When he awoke in the QEII, he recalls, Susan told him what had happened.
He remembers her telling him that she loved him. Collins couldn’t answer because of the tubes in his mouth. When he could, he looked at his wife and said: “I love you. And I want a Harley.”

Today, riding his new Harley-Davidson Road King — as well as his Triumph Victory Kingpin — is a passion. He and Susan have travelled from Malibu to Long Beach, Calif.,
and around Las Vegas on rented Harleys.
Closer to home, they use the Road King.

Collins’s other passion is public speaking — both as a motivational speaker, recounting the illness that changed his life, and as an emcee. He is the standing emcee at the annual World Critical Illness Insurance Conference and spoke at the recent Advocis conference in Halifax. “It’s totally different from my day-to-day work,” Collins says. “It’s exhilarating. It’s a high.”

The key to a successful presentation, he says, is letting his audience know who he is:
“There must be an emotional connection or they don’t buy.” Now, there is a connection of another kind with his target market.

“It’s ironic,” notes Collins, “that I’m making a living selling living benefits to physicians.
The people who saved my life were
physicians. It happened for a reason.” IE