bradgawne

 Brad Gawne

Brad Gawne has been successfully involved in entrepreneurial and senior operational roles in organizations for over eighteen years.

Mr. Gawne joined Brovada Technologies (www.brovada.com) in June 2010 to become part of the executive management team with the title of Vice President of Systems Engineering.

At Brovada Mr. Gawne is responsible for:

• working with the executive team on strategy and direction
• leading the enterprise implementation teams and mentoring team members in both insurance and technical architectures
• augmenting sales teams and providing input into marketing strategies on an ad-hoc basis
• providing industry knowledge in insurance and technology to support strategic operational decisions such as partnerships on an ad-hoc basis
• providing onsite visits to new and potential customers to discuss and gather requirements and assess product gaps
• writing SOW’s (statements of work) and other assessments for new and emerging clients
• working alongside the Chief Technology Officer to align product architecture with customer requirements and drive efficiencies in implementation and support
• contributing expertise toward SRED and other government grant programs

History

In 1993 after several years of consulting during university, Mr. Gawne partnered with a group of insurance companies to become the founding employee of MCCG Inc. (www.mccg.net). During MCCG’s inception Mr. Gawne formed and led the product development team at MCCG, set technical direction and designed growth plans to build the organization from inception to over ten property and casualty insurance clients around Canada during their first 5 years in operation. Mr. Gawne worked directly with the mutual insurance companies, their employees and MCCG’s board of directors to build a client centric product that would enable them to use technology strategically while also maintaining control over their future technology directions.

Mr. Gawne left MCCG in 1998 to form Bralar Software Inc, which provided software products and consulting services to the Property and Casualty Insurance industry. Bralar’s client list spanned many of the large stock insurers such as Axa, Aviva, Royal Sun Alliance, Presidents Choice, Continental National Assurance and many others. As well, Bralar provided services to non-insurers such as Conestoga Cold Storage, The City of Toronto, Applied Geologics Inc and National Cash Register (NCR).

Of notable achievement, during his time with Bralar, Mr. Gawne was responsible for consolidating the technology initiatives for over 75% of the Ontario Farm Mutual Insurance Companies by designing a restructuring plan for MCCG that resulted in uniting over 35 insurers with combined premiums over 250 million dollars under a single shared technology initiative.

In 2001, in an expansion strategy for Bralar, Mr. Gawne became a shareholder, partner and Vice President of Insurance Systems Inc. (ISI) (www.webwriter.ca) in Toronto, Ontario. As part of the executive team at ISI, Mr. Gawne altered the strategic direction of ISI and transformed them from a customized solution provider into a product based vendor. Mr. Gawne was part of the sales and marketing team at ISI and was also responsible for designing the intellectual property behind their first generation of back office solutions and rules engine technologies.

During Mr. Gawne’s involvement with ISI revenue growth averaged 2500% per annum for over three years and saw ISI achieve the ranking of 17th in Canada’s fastest growing companies by Profit Magazine in 2004. During this time, Mr. Gawne’s rules engine software was selected as the rating and underwriting engine of choice by CSIO (Canada’s insurance standards body) to integrate with their industry standardization portal for Automobile and Habitational Insurance. Many of Canada’s largest insurers deployed rates on the CSIO portal using Bralar’s rules engine including Aviva, Pilot, Axa, Scottish and York, CNA, Dominion and several others.

Mr. Gawne rejoined MCCG as its Chief Technology Officer and a member of the executive team in 2005 through MCCG’s acquisition of his company Bralar Software Inc. and following the sale of his interests in ISI. During his time at MCCG, Mr. Gawne was responsible for architecting their latest generation of backoffice software, providing input into their back office product strategy, working on R&D initiatives such as MCCG’s SOA Gateway, taking ownership of their technology roadmap and sourcing and coordinating high quality off-shore teams to assist in product development.

Skills

In addition to his executive/senior management and business skills, Mr. Gawne has extensive hands on-experience in software programming and architecture as well as a diverse range of experience doing Business Analysis, Systems Integrations, database architecture and customer facing roles such as project management and technical sales. Mr. Gawne has skills at the expert level in Oracle, Java, ANSI-SQL and Powerbuilder as well as junior to intermediate skills in a variety of technologies and software packages.

Please see:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bradgawne for a detailed work history.

Education

Mr. Gawne holds a degree in theoretical Mathematics and Statistics with a concentration in Actuarial Science from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA with specialization in international business from Wilfred Laurier University. Mr. Gawne also holds several industry certifications including the Canadian Securities designation.