For more than 75 years, Vienneau Insurance has served as a trusted, community-rooted insurance agency in Canada, blending the personal touch of a local, family-owned business with the capabilities of a full-service personal lines insurance company. 

Today, the team works with more than 20 insurance providers and supports approximately 20,000 clients across personal and commercial lines, delivering a deeply human approach to insurance that prioritizes client relationships over policy transactions. For clients, this means they don’t have to navigate phone trees or generic service desks, and instead can connect directly with their agent, who is often the same person they’ve spoken with for years.

As the brokerage continued to grow, however, Vienneau’s commitment to delivering exceptional service began to strain under the weight of increasing operational complexity. This was especially the case for personal lines renewals.

That’s where Quandri came in.

Manual processes, mounting backlogs, and a call for change

Vienneau Insurance hired Shawn Kelly as Head of Operations to modernize their processes and better leverage technology. One of Shawn’s first projects was to address the growing backlog of renewal reviews. Although Vienneau had always prided itself on a responsive and personalized service, internal systems and operational processes were struggling to keep up with a growing renewal backlog. 

Many reviews, for example, were being handled manually. While the team was doing everything they could to keep pace, the process was time-consuming, reactive to clients calling in, and vulnerable to seasonal surges and staffing disruptions. 

“It wasn’t broken, but it wasn’t built to scale either,” Shawn explained. “The level of human effort required was really high.” During the summer months, renewal backlogs would peak, and agents would spend significant time triaging policy documents and digging for critical information, which is time they could have spent connecting with clients or identifying cross-sell opportunities. In some cases, premium increases were caught only after a client called in with concerns, rather than a broker identifying this change and proactively reaching out ahead of time.

Staffing up wasn’t the right solution, either. Hiring and training for high-volume, detail-heavy policy review work proved difficult and slow. And while the company had ambitions to modernize processes and better leverage technology, they hadn’t yet found a solution that felt like the right fit.

The leadership team at Vienneau saw an opportunity: automate the low-value, repetitive work so that agents could regain their focus on delivering a personalized and proactive client experience.

A fast start to efficiency: Implementing Quandri

It took the Vienneau team just 30 days to implement Quandri. Shawn and the team started by evaluating the existing renewals process because, in his own words, “We were spending so much energy just keeping our heads above water and we didn’t have the bandwidth to pursue the opportunities we knew were there.”

These opportunities included upselling additional coverages, identifying policy gaps, and growing the total value of each client relationship. As part of this evaluation, he spoke to staff at length and analyzed existing reporting data. And, although there was some appetite for automation already, it was clear that everyone needed a faster, more effective way to overcome their renewal backlog. Moreover, the team needed to reform core workflows that would set everyone up for future success.

Because Quandri’s AI-powered renewal intelligence works directly inside the agency’s existing Applied Epic environment, it made for a remarkably smooth onboarding process, too. “The work happens within the tool,” Shawn noted. “This meant we could set our parameters, create profiles, and we were off.” 

More importantly, Quandri allowed agents to quickly understand the complex policy documentation and carrier nuances across their 20 different markets without requiring any manual reviews. This meant agents could provide clients with specific value instantaneously, supporting in the reduction of inefficiencies associated with multiple client touchpoints. 

Once the team was no longer bogged down by renewals, new possibilities opened up. Brokers now received clean, consistent renewal summaries that flagged opportunities like missing overland water coverage or single-line policies, which made it easier to spot clients who could benefit from additional protection.

In less than a quarter, Vienneau had cleared its renewal backlog and shifted into a more proactive, scalable model, all without needing to hire more staff. 

Making room for meaningful conversations

With their renewal backlog now unblocked — and with automated renewal reviews running reliably in the background — Vienneau’s personal lines team experienced a fundamental shift in how they worked. 

What was once a reactive, high-effort process became a proactive and predictable one. And as Shawn stated: “Quandri didn’t just save us time, it gave us room to grow.”

Thanks to Quandri, Vienneau was able to reduce the pressure placed on its renewal reviews team, as well as streamline broker workflows and eliminate the seasonal spikes that had once overwhelmed their operational infrastructure. 

Now, brokers can engage clients with more confidence and less stress, and show up to conversations not only armed with personalized renewal information, but also with tailored and timely upsell and cross-sell recommendations. As Shawn explained: “It’s not just about being efficient. It’s about having a consistent, resilient process that allows us to do our best work.”

At its core, Vienneau’s reimagined renewals process isn’t just a story about automation; it’s a story about reclaiming time and focusing on what matters most. By removing the operational friction in their day-to-day workflows, they’ve created space for conversations and relationships to flourish, which allows the personal lines team to concentrate their efforts on more intentional, more strategic growth. And in doing so, they proved that technology doesn’t replace the human side of personal lines insurance, it empowers it.