ABOUT STRATEGIQ
I was strolling along a sunny Vancouver sidewalk chatting with Robert, an elderly British gentleman and seasoned veteran of the insurance industry, when he turned to me and, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, said “write a better book, preach a better sermon or build a better mousetrap, and even though you build your house in the woods, the world will beat a path to your door.”
About eight years earlier I was just completing a research project for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Along the way I made the acquaintance of risk management expert Jim Swanson. I remember saying to Jim that over the course of the project I had developed a growing feeling that First Nations in Canada are paying way more in insurance premiums than they probably have to.
“Of course they are” said Jim. “Any organization that hasn’t done a market allocation or implemented a risk management program is paying more than it has to. The question is what are you going to do about it.” In 2006 unfortunately the answer was, nothing.
In 2014 Robert’s offhand comment completed a circuit and the synapses in my brain fired. Today we are proud to take large corporate risk management thinking and strategy, repackage and re-scale it, and offer it to small and mid-size organizations. This website, and the services described, is our mousetrap. A far better mousetrap.
Greg has spent the past 24 years working almost exclusively in the field of commercial finance and Aboriginal business development. His time as Chief Financial Officer at the Tribal Resources Investment Corporation included financing over 400 Aboriginal business startups or expansions. Since embracing the entrepreneurial gene and starting up his own consulting firm in 2004, Greg has conducted or participated in over 75 consulting engagements for Aboriginal communities and organizations.
Greg specializes in conducting market allocation exercises, self-insurance plans and Enterprise Risk Management Plans. However, his work also includes operational reviews, business plans, feasibility studies, proposal writing, strategic planning facilitation and project management.
When not running trails or SCUBA diving with his kids, Greg thinks about running trails or SCUBA diving with his kids. Greg and family live in Kamloops, BC.
Highly accomplished and deeply networked, Jim’s experience in the risk management and insurance sector spans decades. He started with ten years of underwriting and loss prevention experience with two major insurers, then added 26 years in increasingly senior roles as a risk manager for the Government of Manitoba.
Jim is currently the senior risk manager for the Province of Manitoba. He has also taught the Canadian Risk Management (CRM) courses at the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, and Red River College. Jim’s consulting practice clientele include many large and medium sized corporations and government entities. He is past Chair of the National Education Committee of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS),an Advisory Board Member for the Insurance Institute of America, and past President of the Manitoba Risk and Insurance Management Society. Along the way, Jim also finds time to appear as guest lecturer for a range of societies and associations.
Jim and family reside in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Robert has been in the insurance business for 45 years. In the early 1970s, Robert acquired his first insurance brokerage, in Victoria, BC. Before the decade was through he acquired 11 more, strategically located throughout Vancouver Island and the City of Vancouver. In the early 1980s, Robert sold his brokerages and opened his own consulting practice, specializing in brokerage mergers and acquisitions, valuations, and senior executive recruitment.
Robert has been the consultant of choice for hundreds of businesses and acted as the advisor, intermediary, and negotiator for most of the insurance brokerage acquisitions made by credit unions throughout British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Among his many professional highlights Robert can claim to be the first Executive Director of the Credit Union Insurance Services Association (CUISA) and the winner of many public speaking competitions. By his own admission, all pale in comparison to his forty-plus year marriage to Marian, his two daughters, and four grandchildren.
A master business strategist, Robert and Marian reside in Vancouver, BC.