A 30-year veteran of the firm, Edward Gibson was just appointed as chief financial for the provider
Modern employment trends mean longevity like Empire Life’s new CFO Edward Gibson is increasingly rare. Working with the same company for 30 years is quite the commitment, so Gibson made an obvious choice to succeed the outgoing Ron Friesen as chief financial officer.
In appointing its chief actuary to the role, Empire Life is looking for continuity in its operations, and Gibson doesn’t foresee huge changes in how he approaches his day-to-day.
“I will have a broader involvement – we have a finance team, a corporate actuarial team, as well as a risk management team,” he says. “Up until last week my focus was on the corporate actuarial and risk management team, and I have maintained that as I’m still the chief actuary, but I have now taken on responsibility for the finance side of things too.”
Empire Life recently reported its Q1 2018 earnings, which saw net income fall to $38.7 million, compared to $50.2 million for the same quarter last year. As the person now tasked with overseeing the company’s finances, Gibson isn’t overly concerned by those numbers, as he outlines.
“I think we had some unusual gains and losses in the first quarter of last year that increased the run rate,” he says. “The run rate we saw this year is closer to what we have been seeing for a while. If you look at the last several quarters you would see that.”
The earnings report also indicated a loss of $3.6 million due to ‘impact of new business,’ which fluctuates depending on the quarter and covers various areas for Empire Life.
“That is the financial impact in the quarter across all business lines – life insurance, group insurance and wealth,” he says. “If you have a cost of doing business, a commission payment for example, if that cost exceeds the premiums paid, as well as changes to liabilities, the sum of all of those things is the impact of new business.”
Gibson comes into the role as insurers in Canada are getting to grips with new regulatory requirements. Much more is expected of companies in 2018 from a compliance standpoint, and that will be an ongoing challenge for both the new CFO and Empire Life.
“We have just implemented the new LICAT capital framework, which is new this quarter, and we are looking forward to IFRS 17, which is still a few years out, but still very much of the minds of life insurers here.”
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