What have been the key moments in your PL Re career so far?

The relationships and trust built over the last 15 years. It has been a fun journey getting to know people across the company and working alongside them. The numerous company social activities further strengthened the relationships at a more personal level. My gratitude to the teams in London, Toronto, and Asia offices for making me feel welcome and for the great times.

I was lucky enough to be trusted and given the opportunity to take on new roles in different functions and different PL Re locations globally. I can’t emphasize strongly enough the value of being mobile and rotating between functions – it broadened my viewpoint, opened-up new opportunities, kept me engaged on new challenges, acquired new skillsets, and I met and worked with so many talented people.

What has been your biggest hurdle/challenge?

I think my biggest challenge was earlier in my career when I needed to overcome my apprehension of my ability to take and deliver on new responsibilities especially at more senior levels. This was the case in when I moved from London to Toronto to lead a part of the valuation team in Toronto and then taking on a pricing role in Singapore. I didn’t have direct experience and was also moving to a different country, and both these changes felt like really big moves at the time.  It took some convincing from my managers at the time to reassure me to take the plunge.

I’ve since learned that while the learning curve was steep with each move, the company gave me sufficient space and support to get up to speed and be successful.

What’s the best thing about working at PL Re?

To me the culture at Pacific Life Re is the best thing about working here. Some of the key parts of the culture that I value the most are

• Being open, honest, and transparent in all our communications and actions especially those from senior management with regards to our values, direction, financial results, etc.
• Being brave to take on new risks (balanced view of risk vs reward where we rarely get a “no” if we put together a good business case)
• Having genuine care for staff and we take on a long-term view in our decision making.

In all, the culture creates a collaborative environment which I enjoy as we strive towards our common goals.

What’s your best career advice?

Be open minded and brave to try new things be it taking on new roles, working in different geographies, learning new cultures, or pushing our risk boundaries. For leaders, it is our turn to give back by inspiring the next generation of leaders by providing them guidance and the platform to grow.

Also, it’s important to find a balance between spending time on tasks and building your relationships with the team / network. Much of our success is dependent on support from each other so having a strong team and network is crucial.