Meet your future boss: Yan Bergeron – Manager – Business Development and Statistics

Hi Yan. What’s your position with the Actuarial Services Division at Promutuel Insurance?

Hi. I'm the business development and statistics manager. Have been for two years. I started out as a senior actuarial advisor working on auto underwriting for Quebec and New Brunswick.

Ok, thanks. Tell us about your actuarial career so far, going back to the beginning.What were the key dates or time periods?

3 years: That’s for my degree in actuarial science from Université Laval.

6 years: That’s the time I spent working for another insurer. I cut my teeth as an actuarial analyst in the underwriting sector for four years, then moved into research and development—also in underwriting— and worked on modelling and predictive segmentation. I also helped integrate a new piece of predictive modelling software.

6 years: Clearly I really like multiples of three. Maybe it means something! I’ve been with Promutuel Insurance for six years. And you already have the details of that adventure in the paragraph above!

How many people are on your team and what are their areas of expertise?

I work with a great team of nine people. We have four areas of expertise:

- Research and development:  we review the structure and integration of new segmentation and modelling tools, with the goal of improving profitability and our alignment with the rest of the industry.

- Business statistics: that’s the more technical part of the job. We produce internal reports and work on improving how we disseminate the results and process the data.

- Geography: our geographic analyst handles our internal mapping needs, especially for our actuarial and marketing teams. Promutuel Insurance’s field of operations is highly local. Getting geographic representations of the areas we cover is a real challenge.

- Production management: we implement changes and improvements to our underwriting platform for our various business sectors. We also work on developing our insurance systems.

What’s your biggest achievement to date with your team?

I’d say our overhaul of Promutuel’s auto underwriting. All ten of us had to take on the project to bring it to completion. We made a real team effort and it was a great success!

What is it like to work on your team?

The whole team is quite collaborative. Different people work in difference capacities, but I think everyone on the team makes a real contribution. There’s a lot of helping and discussion and that’s something I’m quite proud of.

What do you look for in a new hire?

I have two major criteria. The first is experience. I’m looking for people who have experience in the fields of expertise that I described above. But I also think personality is really important, because it has an impact on the whole team and on our daily work. I like to work with people who are creative, who aren’t afraid to get off the beaten path, be it in business statistics, actuarial sciences, or geography. Those, for me, are the two essential traits. I also try to hire people who want to share what they know. It’s very important to have experienced people on our team who are willing to coach our more junior members.

What makes your team the “best” and most fun to work on?

It’s hard to pick just one aspect, so I’m going to give you several. First: the variety of the workload. Everyone gets to do a bit of everything. There aren’t any internal borders. Second: strategic mandates. My RD team is frequently asked to work on important, confidential files. Last: what makes my team different from the competition is that we work directly with our mutual insurance associations, giving them advice and support on a daily basis.

How do you motivate your troops?

One of the great things about my job is that I don’t really have to motivate anyone! Seriously though, my team is stimulated by the kind of projects we work on. We tend to be pretty positive. It’s also really motivating to work with a company that’s on an upwards trajectory and is really outstripping some of the competition in terms of growth.

Thanks Yan! How can people interested in joining the team contact you?

Contact me on LinkedIn, send me an invite, tell me about your background and, most importantly, your goals.

See all our new positions here: www.promutuelassurance.ca/fr/carriere-equipe-actuariat

We look forward to meeting you!