Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon. It's an honour to be before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. As indicated, I am the chair, president, and CEO of the Chubb Insurance Company of Canada. In Canada, Chubb is a private property and casualty insurance company. We have four offices across the country and we employ 420 staff in those offices.
We usually fall around 350th on the Financial Post 500 list. We have about $2.5 billion under asset management, and our top-line revenue was $670 million at the end of last year, so that gives you a little perspective on the size of the firm.
We serve clients through a broker distribution channel, and it's in three specialty areas: the higher net worth personal lines business; executive liability products, which are things like directors' and officers' insurance; and commercial property and casualty business. We're part of the Chubb Corporation, which is one of the world's largest property and casualty organizations. As Ms. Redies mentioned, we're also a proud recipient of the Catalyst Award, which we received several years ago for our work in the advancement of executive female talent within the organization.
To also give you a little perspective about what I'm sharing with you and hoping to contribute, I am currently a permanent resident in Canada, having arrived in 2004 to assume the job of just president and CEO; the chairmanship was added two years later. I'm in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship, which I'm very hopeful of obtaining.
I began working with Chubb while I was still in university. At that time probably about 10% of the university population were women in my training class. The company, as an insurance company, has a reputation for fairness, integrity, and inclusion, all of which are attributes that serve a diverse set of constituents at the staff, client, and importantly, community service level, so my comments to the committee are around my leadership positions within my company and my community.
My experiences involving the development of women are varied, and they also include being the mother of two young adult daughters.
I have been a past member of our corporation's women's development council, which is now 25 years old. It was established to be certain that women at Chubb were receiving the right developmental opportunities to advance into senior positions at the firm. Our company has been an early adopter of the idea of improving business results through the engagement of all talent available, so we found it very logical to retain, develop, and promote the best talent in our industry by creating development programs specifically geared toward women so that we would have them ready in equal numbers to their male counterparts to enter into management ranks.
Management at Chubb is encouraging the promotion of the current mission of the council, which exists today, and I'm now an adviser to that council. The mission is “reach up, reach out, and reach down”, and to work with women within the company, within our industry, and with the communities we serve to support women at all levels.
In addition to our internal organizations, I have had the opportunity in various capacities to work with women's leadership groups across Canada and the U.S. A hallmark of our company is to be an active participant in the communities we serve through philanthropy and charitable giving. I've had the distinct pleasure of being personally involved in, and involving others in, leadership in important Canadian organizations. Some of these are specific to the development of young women leaders. They include Junior Achievement, which is in the classroom at the middle and high school level, and I've been involved in the development of executive talent in other organizations as well.
Each organization continues to be concerned that not enough progress has been made to have women positioned for larger jobs in the area of their expertise. Women are not advancing at numbers anywhere close to those of men, leaving us with less diverse management across all sectors of academia, business, and government.
There is research that suggests initiatives have stalled or reached a plateau. It is particularly acute in industry: women are graduating in equal percentages from commerce and MBA programs at university, but by the time they should be ready for executive or senior positions in their area, there still appears to be a pipeline issue.
Both our corporation in Canada and the global corporation, as I have indicated, have been very active with Catalyst, the global research firm, for many years. I sit on the Canadian advisory board of Catalyst, and as I believe Ms. Redies was suggesting, on March 8 of this year the most recent consensus on women's positioning on boards and in senior leadership was released, indicating little positive movement has been attained in the advancement of female representation. Catalyst is one of several organizations, including government agencies, reviewing how to produce better outcomes, so I'm quite pleased that this is on the status of women committee's agenda.
My work with the Women's Leadership Board at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University suggests some progress is being made in academia and in governments across the globe, but is still surprisingly low, considering it is 2012. Chubb is also a supporter of Carleton University's women in public policy initiative and its leadership curriculum for improving skills for public service. While this program is gender neutral, there are advocacy and development initiatives for women in public service that are specific.
In Toronto I am currently chairing the International Women's Forum. This is a global network of women across practices, geographies, and demographics who support one another. It has an annual fellowship program for the development of mid-level women for the next big position in their field, and the Toronto chapter is also piloting work in the area of pipeline creation for women on boards of directors.
While I do not have the same level of prescription that Ms. Redies offered, I certainly support the four areas she identifies. I do believe we have to continue to improve education in our elementary and secondary school systems in both genders. Financial literacy is a key of one of the organizations that I'm a part of, Junior Achievement, and it is bringing that curriculum into the classroom.
I also believe we need programming for young girls and high school-level and university-level women that is specific to the unique positions in their careers as they balance family and other choices that are unique to them as a gender.
In sum, while the statistics are not yet showing in the corporate executive suite or the boardroom, I think a great number of areas in education and government are continuing to look at this issue, and much optimism is to be expected.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today; I look forward to answering any questions you may have.