For much of the past two years, Canadian businesses have focused on inflation. As price pressures eased, attention shifted to geopolitics and cross-border trade. Now, inflation is creeping back into the picture.
Paul Jackson (pictured), Zurich Canada’s new CEO, says that those shifts are especially pronounced among mid‑sized manufacturers who depend heavily on the United States for both inputs and customers.
"Inflation is still a major topic, particularly as the external environment continues to shift,” he told Insurance Business. “Cross‑border trade with the US, and the impact of tariffs and the uncertainty that brings, is also at the forefront for our customers, particularly those in mid‑sized manufacturing businesses.”
Those firms face a double exposure. Many source critical components south of the border, or further afield via US‑centric supply chains, while also relying on American buyers for a large share of their revenue. Any shift in tariffs, trade policy or political priorities can hit on both sides of the balance sheet.
“They have dependency on the US for the supply chain and for the consumer market,” Jackson noted. “In an unstable or uncertain economic environment, the question becomes: how can your insurance carrier support you with bringing certainty to your revenue and certainty to your P&L over a longer period of time?”
That idea of “economic resilience” – not just paying for losses, but giving customers more predictability through uncertainty – is becoming a recurring theme in conversations with larger commercial clients.
“Our customers are looking in this market for us to support them in a couple of different ways,” Jackson says. “One is creating some certainty around economic resilience – how we can support them as they look to either reshape their businesses for different markets, or respond to the challenge of tariffs.”
In practice, that can mean several things:
Jackson argues that this kind of work moves insurers closer to the strategic planning table, rather than being seen purely as a cost line.
“There’s a focus on resilience more broadly,” he says. “In an unstable or uncertain economic environment, how can we, as an insurance carrier, support customers with more certainty over a longer period of time?”
Jackson’s perspective is shaped by Zurich’s recent internal realignment. Zurich Canada has been moved out of the North American division and into Zurich International – a portfolio of markets, mostly in Europe and Australia, that he says look increasingly similar to Canada in both risk profile and politics.
“We see an opportunity to expand our engagement with colleagues in Europe, the UK and Australia, to think about the world in a different way than we have before,” he says.
Canada, in his view, is entering an important phase as a “middle power” that is attracting fresh attention and capital.
“I think Canada is at a really pivotal moment as a country, both economically and geopolitically,” Jackson says. “There are lots of opportunities for us to really change the profile of Canada on the world stage, which personally very much excites me.”
On the ground, that is showing up as a pipeline of large‑scale investments: energy transition projects, transportation and digital infrastructure, and a wave of new data centres. Zurich, with its multinational balance sheet, sees itself as a natural partner for those builds – and for the ecosystems of mid-market suppliers and contractors that orbit them.
“We are natural partners on big infrastructure investments in energy and anything construction-related, particularly data centres, which are a key area of focus for us,” Jackson says. “In a market that’s poised to see significant infrastructure investment, it’s a great place for Zurich to be in a position where we can actually support and enable some of the projects that will shape the Canadian economy to come.”
For Canada’s mid-sized manufacturers, that emerging landscape is both a threat and an opportunity. Tariffs and political shocks may disrupt old patterns, but re‑wiring supply chains and serving new projects at home could open fresh paths to growth.
The challenge, Jackson suggests, is to build the kind of risk and insurance structures that let those businesses make bold choices without being derailed by the next turn in the geopolitical cycle.
