Go small or go home: One broker’s journey from a multi-national firm to a Canada-wide independent brokerage
Richard Silang had a vision for how insurance in Ontario’s transportation sector could serve clients better. He decided the best way to realize this vision was to leave the big firms behind to go and lead an independent brokerage.
When Richard Silang sits down with a trucking industry client, he doesn’t immediately launch into insurance speak. “I ask what keeps them up at night, what their ambitions are,” says Silang, branch president of CMB Mississauga. It’s a heart question – not the kind of head question one might expect of an experienced insurance broker.
And that’s Silang all over. He’s specialized in insurance for Ontario’s transportation sector almost since the start of his career two decades ago and, in all that time, his care and respect for the people who move goods around our nation has only grown and deepened.
“I personally value what the trucking industry does,” he says, adding that it has faced so much hardship over the last few years – from the total upheaval of the pandemic, to massive driver shortages, rising freight rates and, most recently, the impact of tariffs on the flow of goods. “This has been a really testing time, and these guys have bravely kept trucking along,” says Silang. “We need them to prosper so we can prosper. They deserve our respect.”
Silang’s commitment to Ontario’s trucking sector led him to make a huge career decision in 2025. He left his job as director of transportation at Jones DesLauriers (Navacord) to launch a new CMB Insurance Brokers office in Ontario.
In some ways, you have to know Silang to truly understand how seismic this decision was. He isn’t simply an insurance broker for the trucking industry – he’s deeply involved with it, a member of just about any industry association you can name and a well-known, well-respected advocate. So, leaving a big, solid firm to, in essence, go out on his own was massive news for people in this tight-knit sector.
But he did it to serve them better. “While insurance is the formal means of doing business with clients, behind that we work to help them improve – help them be more reputable, more insurable, more profitable,” says Silang. “I feel like when I joined CMB, I joined an organization through which I can genuinely help the industry.” So, when he asks a client what keeps them up at night, he feels like he finally has the latitude and tools he needs to help them sleep easy again.
Richard Silang, President, CMB Insurance Brokers Mississauga
The lure of transportation
“My story starts on December 5, 2005,” says Silang, with great specificity – it’s a very strong memory for him.
With a background in sales, he seized an opportunity to get his foot in the door at Marsh Canada. “After my first interview, they created a role for me as a cold caller,” says Silang. “They gave me a list and said, ‘start calling’, so I started calling.” He says the lead list contained all types of businesses, adding it was like an unintentional rotational education program. “I had to learn all of these industries and the one I resonated with most was transportation. I got to understand the challenges, like competing on freight, the small margins, the insurance costs.”
Cold calling is never done in private, and Marsh’s national transportation practice leader at the time took notice of Silang’s conversations with trucking companies. “He took an interest in me, took me under his wing and mentored me, he vouched for me and my evolution at the organization.”
Silang quickly rose through the ranks going from cold calling and lead generation, to becoming a producer in 2010, and earning his Chartered Insurance Professional (CIP) designation in 2012. By 2014 Silang was assistant vice president, and by 2018 was heading up transportation central zone sales at Marsh. His first official deal at the company was landing a 100+ truck account and by the time he left in late 2020, he had built a substantial book.
The importance of relationship building
“In transportation, it’s all about relationships,” says Silang. He knew that building the business at Marsh was wholly dependent on showing clients that he not only understood their challenges, but he could also meaningfully address them.
“2008 to 2020 were good years growing the business,” he says. “Big companies, small companies – it didn’t matter to me how big they were, whether they were institutional or not, they’re all important to keeping our economy going. I was more motivated by that than any institutional directive.”
Jones DesLauriers (Navacord) came knocking after Silang signed their biggest trucking client. “I thought I was going to be at Marsh forever,” he says. But he made the move because he believed the firm offered him the scope he needed to better serve the sector he loved.
During his time with the firm, Silang helped to grow the business significantly, worked on improving insurance products, and implemented processes aimed at helping trucking companies lower insurance costs by building their reputations for best practices and safety. “I helped to improve the partnership between the broker, the trucking company and the insurance company,” he says.
Silang saw transportation as an ideal long-term vertical line – his vision was to be less transactional and more relationship and communication-based; he saw the possibilities of a value offering beyond insurance. “Insurance is one of the top ten costs for the trucking industry,” says Silang. “It does affect their bottom line. So, it’s not enough for a broker to take their info and throw it at a market and see what sticks.”
So, he decided to make another move to work with a brokerage that would help him realize that vision. That’s when Ben McDonald, CEO of Insurance Growth Network (IGN), suggested to Silang that he build his own.
“There’s a lot of care and respect for how CMB conducts their business and treats their people. I appreciate we’ve put in the effort to get this done right. Every person I’ve met in this process has shown commitment to the trucking industry.”
A dedicated focus on trucking: reputation is everything
McDonald says that IGN was built to help producers, like Silang, who know they’re capable of achieving a lot more but can’t see how to make it happen. “They can see a way of doing business better, they know what they want to achieve, but there are barriers to overcome,” he says. Barriers like access to capital, finding marketing support, hiring talented staff – all the things anyone needs to launch a business. IGN helps these producers by building individualized business and growth plans, then providing the supports they need to set those plans in motion.
For Silang, his only imperative was to do right by Ontario’s trucking industry. “In my early conversations with Ben, I asked if he saw transportation as a long-term vertical. He showed me that CMB, IGN and Mango were truly committed to transportation – I mean, only a few brokers are looking at telematics as being critical to insurance in transportation, and they are one of them.”
Silang is referring to IGN-supported Mango Insurance, which specializes in long-haul, cross-border, non-dangerous goods trucking firms. Mango’s founder, Mohit Halkare, developed specialized telematics systems that provide his clients with advanced risk management tools that improve safety and efficiency – key factors for any insurer.
That kind of focus on and investment in the trucking industry was an absolute balm for Silang. As branch president of the new CMB Mississauga office, he can serve the Ontario trucking industry in the comprehensive manner he’s always strived for – something more entrepreneurial with less red tape, more flexibility and better responsiveness.
What does that look like on the ground? It comes back to a company’s reputation and how that reputation impacts insurability and profit. Shippers vet the companies they hire, and if a company has any reputational question marks, from driver safety to efficiency to road violations and more, they will lose business. “Load brokers will put truckers against each other,” he says. “Trucking is a small industry, and everything comes down to reputation.”
Silang says that brokers can help trucking companies protect their reputations – he gives drivers as an example. “Drivers are a big thing,” he says. “We can be engaged when our clients are finding drivers. We can’t tell them who to hire, but we can give them questions to ask, a process to follow when hiring. We can help them with resources that will help them onboard safe drivers.”
As he puts it, when a trucking company has a good reputation, that’s usually down to good operational and safety practice decisions, and that makes them more insurable. Being more insurable brings down insurance costs, while having a good reputation earns more business. More business and lower insurance costs mean more money on the company’s bottom line. “I enjoy seeing companies prosper,” says Silang. “There’s a certain passion I have to see people do well.”
He says it’s taken some time to get CMB Mississauga from idea to reality, and that’s a good thing. “There’s a lot of care and respect for how CMB conducts their business and treats their people. I appreciate we’ve put in the effort to get this done right. Every person I’ve met in this process has shown commitment to the trucking industry.”
And for Ontario trucking firms, Silang has one message: “We’ve heard their concerns, we know what they’re facing, and we want to be there in the tough times as well as the good,” he says. “I want to be in the mix and help these businesses become successful.”