Finding a home in Canada’s P&C insurance industry

Dylan Pinter-Findlater, manager of Intact Insurance’s digital underwriting strategy in national commercial lines, has found a home in the property and casualty insurance industry.

Based in Calgary, Pinter-Findlater works with a national team of eight people at Canada’s largest P&C insurance company by market share, seeking ways to use artificial intelligence to enhance the company’s commercial insurance underwriting.

“I feel like I can really make a change here on a national scale,” Pinter-Findlater tells Canadian Underwriter. “That part is really intriguing to me. It really challenges me to develop as a leader.

“It’s pushed me out of my comfort zone in a variety of different ways…This [subject matter] is very, very new to me, and it’s challenged me in my career. It’s challenged me in my leadership. And it’s given me opportunities that are very different from what I had before. So I’d say this is the role I was looking for, and I’m eager to see what’s next [for me] at Intact.”

For his efforts, Pinter-Findlater is one of six recipients of the Insurance Institute of Canada’s 2025 National Leadership Awards in the ‘Emerging Leaders’ category.

Pinter-Findlater is working with colleagues that span the country, including in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, London, Ont., Mississauga, Toronto, and New Brunswick. Their mission is to find ways to use AI to streamline the process of data collection, helping commercial underwriters assess a host of Canadian companies in various lines of business.

“Commercial insurance is vast, right? There are so many different types of companies,” Pinter-Findlater says. “Oftentimes, underwriters encounter a brand new business, sometimes a new operation that didn’t even exist a year ago. So there are a lot of ‘filling in the gaps’ that needs to be done [in terms of data collection and analysis] and AI can help with that journey.

“I don’t think by any means it replaces the underwriter — I’ll tell you, it doesn’t replace the underwriter — but it assists them in going out and gathering the data they need to perform their job to the highest level. It helps with the integrity of data, which is what I mean by ‘filling in the gaps.’ And of course, it helps with efficiencies, so you can perform your role faster.

“AI is not at a place where you can fully trust it, because it’s only as good as the data you input into it. So there are some nuances. But still, at the moment, it’s really an enhancement to the underwriters’ role in terms of their risk assessment, selection, and efficiency.”

In leading his team, Pinter-Findlater describes himself as a bit of an introvert, but he’s a keen listener, loves to collaborate, and advocates for his team’s skill development, helping them achieve the team’s goals while also furthering their own personal career goals.

“There are opportunities I can give you as a leader, but the best opportunities are the opportunities that you create for yourself,” he says of his leadership style. “If you have a development mindset, and you’re willing to drive the bus yourself, and go out and create and innovate, those opportunities will far supersede anything I can just hand you.

“That’s where real [personal] development comes [from]. And that’s what I look to foster with the people I work with.”

Pinter-Findlater’s own personal career trajectory is an illustration of practising what he preaches. His describes his desire to help others as “giving” back to people in the same way people helped him launch his career from humble origins.

“I didn’t have a fancy childhood growing up. I was actually homeless as a kid,” he tells CU. “I’m the first one in my family to own a home and graduate from university.”

He graduated in 2017 with a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from University of Calgary. He said he sought stable and secure work that wasn’t subject to the boom and bust cycles associated with working in the province’s oil and gas industry.

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“I was really just looking for something, not even necessarily in insurance, but with a large, established organization where there was lots of opportunity and stability.”

He wound up at Intact, Canada’s largest P&C insurance company, in 2018. He graduated from the company’s underwriting academy, a two-year rotational program, and then became an underwriting assistant for a few months. Then he quickly moved through the ranks of intermediate and senior underwriter; from there, he managed commercial lines for almost three years.

And then, he got the call to his current position, “which is far different” than what he’s done before, he says.

“There’s unlimited stability here,” he says of working at Intact. “But the flip side of that is that there’s also a heck of a lot of opportunity here, and in the P&C industry in general.”

David Gambrill

David has twice served as Canadian Underwriter’s senior editor, both from 2005 to 2012, and again from 2017 to the present.