In turbulent times, what career-changers want from the P&C industry

Job stability and opportunities to advance (both vertically and laterally) are attracting students to Canada’s property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry.

At a time when Canada shed more than 100,000 jobs in January and February, first-year students in the Insurance Management Program at Humber Polytechnic’s career fair in Toronto on Mar. 5 tell Canadian Underwriter job stability’s high on the priority list.

“I went to school at McMaster, and I graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater and Film,” says Zavion Telford, a first-year student in Humber’s Insurance Management – Property and Casualty graduate certificate program.

“When I was in school, I was a freelance videographer — so yeah, it was as unstable as you get,” says Telford. “It was freelance work. I had no idea what I was bringing home until the end of the month. I tangentially moved towards digital marketing, because it was very related. And then, I decided to step away from it altogether because of the instability, especially at a time like this.”

Why insurance?

“It was a complete opposite” from that kind of instability, Telford says. “And I think that’s why something like insurance now is so attractive to me.”

Bonnie Wang is several weeks into her first year in Humber’s insurance program. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree specializing in computer science and film. She also did a post-grad program at Humber.

“I was studying post-production, so I was doing film and television visual effects — like green screen, animation, things like that,” Wang says. “During the past few years, I enjoyed what I did. But then, with the whole [introduction of] AI, and then the Hollywood strikes [in 2023], it just became very unstable.

“I have friends who work in insurance, I was asking around for advice. Like many of my classmates, I came across this post on Reddit, looking for second-career education opportunities.”

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Gena Markous, 31, is one such career-changer. For her, the draw to insurance had less to do with job stability — she already had stable work as a scientist — and more to do with the opportunity to advance within the insurance industry.

“In insurance, there’s a lot of upward mobility, there’s a lot of career progression, which I don’t see a lot of in science,” Markous says, referring to the time doing research in a lab. “In the sciences, I looked around me and I saw where my colleagues were. They were stuck in the same positions for 10-to-15, years, and that scared me. It’s like, ‘I can’t, I can’t do it.’”

Markous’ younger sister is now a reinsurance broker with Aon. Gena saw her sister start off in an actuarial program and then pivot her career to make a lateral move within insurance. Learning from her sister’s experience, she saw an example of how someone can not only advance vertically within the P&C insurance industry, but also shift laterally.

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Gena saw insurance as an opportunity to match the best of both worlds.

“I heard about life science insurance, which is niche,” Marcos says. “I didn’t know that was a thing, but that makes a lot of sense….I had a few great coffee chats with people who introduced me to this niche, and they changed my mind about what I thought about the word ‘insurance’ in general….

“So I feel like I’m a little ahead of the curve, with life science insurance being a little niche in Canada currently, but the goal is to somehow make my way and see where I land.”

David Gambrill

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