Fulfilling a family legacy by going independent
For Adam Thomson, opening his own independent brokerage felt like the natural way to build on the foundation set by his father and grandfather, while also creating something uniquely his own.
It might be hard to escape your destiny, but that doesn’t mean you can’t shape it the way you want it. At least, that’s been Adam Thomson’s experience.
Thomson grew up in an insurance household in Medicine Hat, Alberta. “My dad owned and managed a brokerage in town,” he says, recalling time spent in the office during summers and after school, helping out and getting to know the business first-hand. “I grew up around the staff, the files and the whole office environment.” His grandfather, a founding member of the Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta (which grew out of the Insurance Agents Association of Alberta), worked at a separate brokerage in town, so the writing on the wall seemed pretty clear. “I wouldn’t say I shied away from it,” says Thomson, who took a finance degree after high school. “I knew at a fairly early age that insurance was where I was headed.”
Today, Thomson leads CMB Saskatoon, his own independent brokerage where he specializes in bespoke insurance solutions for technical industries, including engineering, that are laden with complex contracts, incredible levels of liability exposure and a lot of pressure to just sign and figure out the details later.
The road from Medicine Hat to this point is a tale many brokers might find familiar: start at the bottom, rise through the ranks, make a few career moves, carve out a niche, become a mentor, build a great book, get swallowed by a merger or two, get frustrated, start asking yourself: is this it?
For Thomson, that question was answered when he made a call to Nicole Hewson, VP of People with Insurance Growth Network (IGN), and began – or rather, restarted – the process of establishing his own brokerage. “I do feel like I’ve spent my personal and professional life preparing for this, without even knowing it,” says Thomson, who opened the doors to CMB Saskatoon in early 2026. “I’m stepping into something I haven’t done before, and yet it feels like home.”
Still, it is a big leap from the comforting arms of an established firm to starting your own brokerage from scratch. For Thomson, it came down to being true to his personal and professional values and a desire to better serve Saskatchewan’s business community by building a brokerage equipped to support complex risks across multiple industries. “‘Is CMB a good fit’ was never a question for me,” he says. “The real question was: is it time to bet on myself?” For Thomspon, the answer was yes.
Adam Thomson, President, CMB Insurance Brokers Saskatoon
Laying the groundwork
Thomson began his insurance career in 2008 as a mid-market commercial underwriter with Aviva in Calgary. “Looking back, it was a good education,” he says. “Starting in underwriting gave me a strong foundation in how risk is evaluated, priced and ultimately paid when claims occur.”
In 2011, he became a broker with what was then Toole Peet in Calgary. “This move allowed me to work directly with clients, help businesses navigate coverage decisions, claims scenarios and risk management strategies,” says Thomson. By 2015 he had his CIP designation and had begun focusing on the needs of the organized real estate sector, designing and developing specialty programs, such as RealProSure, while also delivering educational seminars on liability and contractual risk.
“By the time I was 30, I had built a book of business and was an accredited instructor for several real estate associations,” says Thomson. In 2019, the Insurance Bureau of Canada named him one of the nation’s top 10 insurance brokers under 40.
Then the pandemic hit and all this momentum came to a grinding halt. It became a turning point that prompted both personal and professional changes.
On the personal front, Thomson and his wife moved with their young children to Saskatchewan to be closer to her family. There, he took on a leadership role in commercial lines with Cornerstone Insurance. Around the same time, he faced significant personal loss. “I got a call that my grandfather had passed away,” he says. “And in the same week, we also received news that my father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.”
With those two calls, everything shifted again. These two men had been central to Thomson’s life – they were mentors, role models and constant sources of guidance. Without them, he felt the path forward wasn’t as clear and, for the first time, he had to really stop and rethink what came next.
Thomson returned to Medicine Hat for his grandfather’s funeral and to be with his father through his illness. “As difficult and tragic as that time was, it gives you as much as it takes away,” he says, referring to the re-evaluation that came in the wake of their loss. “I stepped back and sat down with my family to map out what we wanted, where we wanted to live, what kind of life we all wanted to build. From there, I built a business plan around those priorities and started working toward it.” You could say that Thomson’s career path became an extension of his family’s goals.
That process took him to Saskatoon where, in 2022, he joined HK Henderson, part of the Navacord group of companies. “I bought a house, sight unseen, and signed a job offer on the same day,” says Thomson. It was nerve-wracking, but it felt right.
Finding his niche
Thomson loved his new position, finding the role both engaging and professionally rewarding – particularly the work around self-insurance structures for provincially regulated short line railways. This introduced him to a range of complex liability scenarios, which was right in Thomson’s wheelhouse.
He then expanded his focus to include engineering clients. “It was something I was always interested in, and I had some exposure to professional liability through my work in real estate,” he says. He dove deep into this new specialty and started to learn. “I looked closely at what engineers deal with day-to-day, their training, the challenges they face, and the expectations placed on them.”
What he found was a highly complex insurance landscape with clear gaps. He saw how many insurance policies, while ostensibly designed specifically for engineers, didn’t fully reflect the realities of the work, from design through to construction and beyond. “It felt like no one was truly listening to what these professionals were saying about their risk,” says Thomson. “That disconnect showed up in outdated renewal processes, how contracts were reviewed and a lack of alignment between claims experience and how engineers actually experience risk in their day-to-day work.”
Liability, for instance, which, in engineering, brings a unique long-tail exposure. “There is personal liability attached to the work,” says Thomson, noting that coverage can extend well beyond project completion. “You can have a claim arise years later after roles have changed, or even after a firm no longer exists. That raises fundamental questions around responsibility and how coverage is structured.”
The more he learned, the more he saw where policies could fail engineers and how they could be structured to better reflect the realities of the work and reduce uncertainty when claims arose. Thomson’s deepening knowledge helped him secure his first engineering account in early 2023.
Drawn to and loving the educational side of insurance, Thomson reached out to the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies (ACEC) and started to deliver seminars on insurance topics for its members. “That’s when we began to build real traction within the space,” he says. He later became an accredited instructor with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS), and that’s when things really took off.
“We hosted our first webinar with APEGS in 2025,” he says. All 500 spots filled up quickly – so quickly that APEGS actually wondered aloud to Thomson if something had gone awry with their registration system. The subject itself was far from flashy, he says. “It was titled: legal contracts and professional liability. Not the kind of topic you’d expect to draw a crowd.” APEGS opened more spots and, in the end, 715 members attended.
The topic might have been dry, but the presentation wasn’t. “I think what resonated was the way it was delivered, breaking down complex ideas through real-world examples with a bit of storytelling and humour to make it accessible,” says Thomson. He was quickly building a reputation for presentations that were both entertaining and highly practical, tapping into a clear hunger among engineers to better understand the role of insurance in their professional lives – what they needed, what they didn’t and how it aligned with the work they were actually doing.
“The first step is always awareness,” says Thomson. “That shift can be uncomfortable at times, but once it happens, it opens the door to more meaningful conversations around risk and risk management, what’s real, what’s assumed and where things can break down between contracts, coverage and claims.”
“I love being part of a community. Not just participating from the sidelines as ‘the insurance guy’, but showing up, connecting with people, building relationships and being involved, There’s a sense of alignment, of purpose, when you’re in the right environment.”
The leap toward independence
Thomson’s affinity for this work is powerful. “I love being part of a community,” he says. “Not just participating from the sidelines as ‘the insurance guy’, but showing up, connecting with people, building relationships and being involved, There’s a sense of alignment, of purpose, when you’re in the right environment. You can call it philosophical but, in business, the best things are achieved when real harmony is present.”
While Thomson was enjoying this work immensely, he began to feel a growing disconnect withing the larger corporate environment. “I’ve always preferred being closer to the work and the people it impacts,” he explains. “In larger organizations, that connection can be more difficult to maintain.”
The reality is that in large national firms, decision making doesn’t often happen at the local level, so people like him can get lost in the mix. In Thomson’s case, he was growing the team, growing the book, successfully mentoring others and developing new market opportunities, but didn’t feel like he was progressing in a way that fit with his long-term goals. “I could feel things shifting,” he says. “The beliefs of others weren’t aligning with my values.”
It was then he revived a 2019 conversation with Hewson and IGN about opening a branch under the CMB banner – they had first spoken about it while he was still in Calgary, before the pandemic changed everything and he moved to Saskatchewan. “I was taken aback as to how much the Insurance Growth Network had grown since then,” says Thomson. He also had some vicarious experiences talking with friends who had joined IGN in the intervening years. “Now I was asking myself some serious questions.”
It came down to values for him – honoring that family plan and the need to dovetail that with his career plan. “Seeing how IGN lives its values matters deeply to me,” he says. “It just didn’t feel like the right fit anymore with Navacord. The cadence and the tone of IGN felt right.”
Thomson continues to build relationships and ensure that Saskatchewan’s business owners find the knowledge and service they need at CMB Saskatoon. “We work alongside them, reviewing contracts, translating risk and aligning their coverage with real project delivery,” he says. “There’s no room for complacency. Risk is constantly evolving and coverage needs to keep pace. Clients shouldn’t have to become insurance experts just to properly protect their businesses.”
Opening his own brokerage is about something bigger, too. Thomson reflects on the example set by his father and grandfather and their legacy, which he now carries forward. “I think about Saskatchewan, and how much I’ve come to value living and building a business here,” he says. “The people here deserve options; there needs to be more competition in this market. We’re here to challenge the status quo and raise the standard of what people expect from their insurance broker.”