When York University’s Ed Furman warned earlier this year that Canada has “no [US] comparable university‑to‑industry pathway” for most insurance careers, his criticism struck a nerve. Outside actuarial science, he argued, most underwriters, brokers, claims professionals, and risk managers still enter the industry by accident, not design.
The York mathematics professor and head of the Actuarial Science Program has put forward a concrete – if still modest – attempt at a solution.
“HAIVE [program] has shown that immersive, paid work-integrated learning… can meaningfully shift the status quo of how talent enters this critical industry in Canada,” Furman said in written comments to Insurance Business.
HAIVE, run through the Risk and Insurance Studies Centre (RISC) Foundation, pairs teams of undergraduate and graduate students from York and the University of Toronto with insurance and risk‑management organisations on live projects. Students are paid and work part‑time over roughly 16 weeks, guided by both an industry mentor and an academic mentor.
Furman sees it as a way to reach the large pool of students who might never become actuaries, but who could thrive in risk and insurance roles if someone actually showed them the industry.
Furman and the RISC Foundation are now pursuing more than $3 million in federal funding to expand HAIVE beyond Toronto’s two major universities.
“The next step is scale,” he said. “We at the RISC Foundation are pursuing more than $3 million in federal funding to expand HAIVE beyond the University of Toronto and York University to other major Canadian universities.”
The growth plan is phased: first, add other Ontario schools – “Waterloo and McMaster in addition to the already partnering University of Toronto and York” – and then expand federally. To make that work, HAIVE would need industry support in terms of project mentors and funding. “Public funding alone is not sufficient,” Furman admitted.
For companies that have so far partnered with HAIVE, its value lies in the way it drops students into the middle of real‑world risk problems.
“In a world where risks evolve more quickly than traditional learning can respond,” the industry lacks a program that “provides a bridge by placing emerging talent within the flow of real industry challenges,” said Dr. Ida Ferrara, professor of economics at York and chair of the RISC Foundation’s board.
Ferrara points to the growing importance of work‑integrated learning as students look for chances “to apply their academic training in settings that mirror the complexity and pace of the real world.”
That immersion, she argues, “deepens their understanding of the industry’s role in addressing complex risks and supporting society at large.”
The projects themselves move with the risk landscape. At CIBC, where risk‑management professional and ORIMS board member Rubie Ling has mentored multiple HAIVE cohorts, the topics have ranged from emerging risks to climate and alternative risk transfer.
“Every four months, we have a group of students assigned to us, so then I am the industry mentor, and they also have an academic mentor,” Ling said. “We take something very current – AI, climate, emerging risks – and ask them to help us use insurance and risk mitigation tools to address it.”
Ling says she’s now been involved in six projects, working with roughly 30 students in total. She describes the experience as a “win, win, win” – for students, employers, the organization, and the wider industry.
Industry leaders watching the talent squeeze see programs like HAIVE as part of a broader response to a changing risk environment.
“Our industry is facing a dual challenge,” said Alister Campbell, president and CEO of the Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation. “The world has become riskier – testing our capacity to select, price, manage and mitigate risk effectively. But at the same time, our ability to attract top talent to help us manage this increased complexity has not increased to match.”
Platforms that “showcase the scope and scale of the problems our industry helps society overcome – and offer the training and tools to enable top talent to more rapidly bring value” are needed “more urgently than ever before,” he added.
HSB Canada CEO Barbara Bellissimo sees the same gap from an employer’s seat. “Across our industry, the talent gap is widening – not because students lack ambition, but because they lack exposure to real-world insurance challenges,” she said. “HAIVE bridges that gap. It gives students hands-on experience with the complex, emerging issues our sector is solving every day.”
Former Ivari CEO Todd Lawrence makes a similar point from his own career path. After a business degree, he headed into finance and banking; insurance barely appeared on the radar.
“Like most, I thought at the time that insurance was a career solely for actuaries or salespeople,” he said. Only later did he become attracted to insurance “due to the long-term nature of the business in terms of creating value and managing risks.”
He believes these kinds of programs can “illuminate a great career path for more aspiring professionals” and “help accelerate the integration and success of these individuals.”
“Insurance is a fascinating industry – it is different, though with many nuances,” Lawrence said. “Having a pipeline of talent being developed that has been exposed to the complexity and nuances of working in the industry would certainly lead to stronger outcomes for both employers and professionals.”
For all that, HAIVE is not a silver bullet. Even if the federal funding bid succeeds and industry steps up with mentors and $5,000 per team, the program will still touch hundreds of students, not the thousands Canada’s insurance sector will need over the coming decade.
Furman himself argued that Canada’s deeper structural gap remains the absence of undergraduate degrees in risk management and insurance – the kind of formal programs that exist at Wisconsin–Madison and other US schools. HAIVE can complement those missing pathways, but it cannot yet replace them.
Selection is another limitation. And while $5,000 per team is modest compared with many corporate budgets, HAIVE’s growth plan depends on insurers and banks consistently supplying both funds and senior mentors at a time when many risk teams are already resource‑stretched.
“Most university students don’t even think of insurance as a career, because the option isn’t there on the menu,” Furman said in his earlier interview. HAIVE may not rewrite that menu overnight.
But if Ottawa and the industry back his expansion plan, it could, at the very least, put one more visible option on the table.
