My Past

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Courtesy of Paul Brennan (Pixabay)
Here's a quick biography. You'll find a detailed timeline with dates in my LinkedIn profile.

I came to Canada from India at age two. I remember snow that came up to my waist. That's less because of the snowfall and more because I was small!

I grew up in London Ontario and studied actuarial science at Western University (then called The University of Western Ontario). My goal was to make the world better and insurance looked like an ideal way. I had four scholarships, including the London Life Actuarial Scholarship.

After graduation, I apprenticed at Metropolitan Life in Ottawa — the coldest capital in the world, according to the Ottawa Citizen. I could believe this. Snow would compress to ice and last for months. Neither salt nor sand would melt it.

Later, I became the product actuary at National Life (working on all versions of Flex Account, MD Life Plan, etc). After NL was absorbed into the parent company Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services (IA for short), I did advanced marketing. This meant supporting advisors in the field with their more important and more complex cases.

While financial literacy is low, insurance literacy is even lower. To share the best of what I knew for free, I started blogging in 2007 for two audiences
  1. The public: Riscario Insider
  2. Advisors: Marketing Actuary
While each was successful, I stopped after 800+ posts to focus on podcasting. I stopped Riscario Insider Radio after 250 episodes to focus on video for two YouTube channels:
  1. The Taxevity Insurance channel: interviews on Tea At Taxevity and answers to real questions on Question an Actuary
  2. My own Riscario Insider channel: miscellaneous topics