Ice Climbing with Brian Taylor
Brian Taylor is not only the VP of risk and capital management at Sun Life of Canada in Waterloo, Ontario, he also has ‘extreme' outside interests in ice climbing and other outdoor activities. Now a self-proclaimed “family man” with two young children, he has pulled back on some of his more risky pursuits, but he still makes the most of the outdoors—especially in months when most people are thinking about vacationing in Cancun or buying a remote start for their car.
How did you become interested in ice climbing?
A friend of mine invited my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, and me out. We tried it for a weekend. My girlfriend hated it, but I really loved it, so I started picking it up after that. I did a lot of ice climbing and rock climbing around southwestern Ontario. If you're going to do any ice climbing, a great place to do it is on the east coast in Vermont and New Hampshire.
How often would you go?
From late December until early March, we would go just about every weekend. There's a place that was very close to us called the Elora Gorge, which was only about a half hour away, so I would regularly check the forecast and either show up to work at noon or take off at 3:00 so I could get out there and do a bit during the week as well.
What were some of your preferred places to climb?
Definitely the preferred place was the probably the easiest place, which was the Elora Gorge. It's a great place. The climbs are about anywhere from about 30-60' tall, but it is nice because it is so close by. That was great in terms of being handy. In terms of the best ice climbing, that was in New Hampshire around North Conway and the White Mountains.
What do you find so appealing about ice climbing?
I'm a winter person, so I love being outside in the sunshine during the winter. This is a sport that allows you to get into that. If you're doing a 75' climb, depending on the difficulty, it may take you anywhere from five minutes to half an hour. I find that when I get to the top, I've thought about nothing except for where I'm going to put my next ice axe in or where I'm going to place my feet for the last half an hour. It's great as an exercise to remove you from all the stresses of your day-to-day life and your work, so that's what really attracted me to it.
So it was probably good when you were taking exams.
Exactly.
What other sports or activities are you involved in, either now or back then?
I'm still involved quite a bit in cross country skiing and winter camping. These activities just further my enjoyment of winter. I was also a volunteer firefighter for two years. I've also been sailing, mostly small lakes. We have a Laser, a 14' sailboat, so that's something I've been able to do all along. That's fun because now we have kids who are four and six, and I'm starting to get them into sailing.
Think they'll be ice climbing soon?
They probably won't be ice climbing soon, but I mentioned that I'm getting them sailing, and I've actually taken up whitewater kayaking as well. I'm also looking into getting them involved in whitewater kayaking in another year or two.
How would you say your experience with ice climbing has helped with your actuarial career, or vice versa?
I think that they are complementary in that as you move along in your actuarial career or any career, you're always going to hit times of a lot of stress, so you need to have those outside-of-work pursuits that allow you to get away from and manage through the stress, so that's certainly that's been helpful for me. With regard to ice climbing, lots of people have other pursuits during the summer time, but I find winter can be a very depressing time for people, so having an outdoor sport during the winter is helpful.
It's interesting, in my role now, I'm in risk management for Sun Life Financial. Ice climbing was all about risk management in terms of how much risk to take. You want to take enough risk that it's exciting, but obviously you don't want to take so much risk that you're putting your life in jeopardy.
Why did you decide to become an actuary?
I actually started off in engineering, got to the end of my first year, and found that I enjoyed calculus and didn't really enjoy anything else. My dad was actually responsible for the pension plan at the firm he was working for, so he set me up for a half-day with Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm he was working with. At the time my dad was living in Racine, Wis., so I went down there and chatted with them for the day, and I thought ‘money and math—those are two things that interest me', so I decided to give it a try.
How long have you been at Sun Life, and what are your responsibilities there? You're VP of risk and capital management.
Actually, it's been an interesting turn. Right now, I'm sitting about 100' away from where I sat 10 years ago in the same building. But in the meantime, I worked at Mutual Life of Canada until '98 (for about eight years) then I went out east and joined up with Maritime Life, which was the Canadian subsidiary of John Hancock. Then I joined up with Manulife for about a year following the acquisition, then I just came back to Sun Life—I say back because it's in the same building, but it's a different company, lots of different people, but I just joined up with Sun Life seven or eight months ago.
What are your responsibilities in that role?
My primary responsibility is risk management, so I'm kind of like the chief risk officer's right-hand man in Canada. My work involves managing our available capital as well as our required capital on a Canadian regulatory basis.
What do you like most about your job?
What I like most about my job is probably the fact that risk management is still a new and evolving area of practice, so you have lots of opportunity to define the standards and the approaches as opposed to some roles in which it's very prescribed—you know; you have to follow step 1, 2 and 3.
How did you become involved in financial services as opposed to insurance or consulting?
I managed to get a summer role at Mutual Life of Canada back when I was still in university and really enjoyed the company. I liked the people I worked for, and they offered me a full-time role after university. I joined up, thinking, “This is kind of fun, I'll enjoy this for a couple years until I figure out what I really want to do with my life.” Then after about two years in the role, I got transferred into the asset-liability management area in 1993, and at that time ALM was in a similar situation as risk management is today. Like every evolving area of practice, a lot of new developments were happening all the time. We really had the opportunity to define the company's approach to ALM. I found as we were doing that, it was a lot of fun. I got a lot of enjoyment out of developing new processes, new systems and actually seeing the benefits to the company. So, that's when I really got engaged in this type of role.
What kind of advice would you give to a candidate or a student entering the profession?
To tie into the whole ‘outside interests' aspect, I think that a candidate really needs to maintain balance in his or her life. Exam success is important in the early years of your career, but achieving that balance and having a broader perspective is so important later on in your career. Develop those outside interests, whether they're sports, hobbies or anything else, so you can have a broader perspective.
Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Sun Life Financial.