Mississauga, Ontario broker Joyce Usher-Mesiano would like to see more women in management in Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry.
“Are there a number of women in the industry?” Usher-Mesiano said to Insurance Business. “Obviously, we all know that it is heavily weighted that way. But when the last study I saw came out, the number of women in senior positions is still surprisingly low.”
Usher-Mesiano, president of National Brokers Insurance Services Inc. and president of Monarch Intermediaries Inc., was recently the only Canadian represented among international winners of the Enterprising Women of the Year Award for 2013. The award is presented by Enterprising Women, a U.S.-based, women-owned publication focused on women entrepreneurs.
Usher-Mesiano said education is key to having more women learn the management skills required to fill executive-level positions in the business. “I’m not one of those individuals who will slam my fist down and say there is a glass ceiling,” she said. “I truly believe that if you have the skills, and if you want to excel, you will. I think the education level has to change, so women can recognize that they can get into the managerial positions. All of the [managerial] education in the industry has to be seen as more important to these individuals.”
Mentoring programs can help, she said.
A 2007-08 demographic study by the Insurance Institute of Canada found that women increasingly filled the ranks of Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry between 1976 and 2006 – to the point now where the industry is “over-reliant” on women in the workforce.
The study found the male share of the labour force declined from 62% in 1976 to 53% in 2006, a 15% decline. The female share, on the other hand, increased from 38% to 47% over the same period – a 25% increase.
The same study found that women held only 23% of senior management roles in the Canadian property and casualty industry in 2006, up a mere 1% since 1996. But waiting in the ranks, just below the senior management roles, at the management and middle management levels, the split in the gender divide was 50-50.
For her part, Usher-Mesiano first entered the property and casualty industry on the underwriting side. She worked on the company side for nine years, before becoming an insurance broker. She said she “fell into” insurance after doing her studies in sociology and law.
The Enterprising Women of the Year Award recognized three things about Usher-Mesiano: 1) the revenue growth of her brokerage, 2) her community involvement, and 3) her work promoting the careers of women in Canada’s insurance industry.
In terms of her community involvement, she dedicates to numerous charitable organizations, including the Women’s President’s Organization (a peer advisory group for women presidents of multi-million-dollar companies), UnitedSuccess (a network for women business owners) and We Connect, which helps diverse businesses with international opportunities.
She credits her brokerage’s revenue growth to an “outside-the-box” offering to commercial clients.
“We have something we call the protector solution,” she said. “It allows us to understand where our client wants to be in five years, so we can start building that policy for them. For example, if they think their business will expand into the United States, then we might look at the insurance company they are with. How are we putting the plan in place for this client? That’s really helping with retention.”
