Equitable Life Insurance Company of Canada Reviews

Pros

Opportunity to make an impact, management willing to listen, good access to senior management.

Cons

Smaller company so scale of some work is limited.

Pros

Good people, always a lot to do (busy is better than being bored), good atmosphere

Cons

Not enough interaction between teams

Advice to Senior Management

None.

Pros

I moved over from another insurance company because I heard good things. Mostly good people. pay and benefits are fair. Good location and free parking. Future of company seems to be solid. Probably really good place to be if getting close to retirement. Onsite cafeteria food isnt great but convenient to have. I think parts of the company are really good but I just have challenges in my area.

Cons

This isnt the team for me. In our areat we have "shhh" signs around and get shhh'd by people even if we are talking about a work issue. I haven't seen this since my library at public school. I wish opco senior management would be more visible. My experiences with both my supervisor and manager have been terrible. I suggested a process improvement idea and my supervisor said it had to come through them. Things are often held over our head like "we should feel lucky to have our upcoming fun day" or that we better stop asking about more dress-down days. We were told we might lose our existing one every two weeks if we didn't stop. I really dont know what it takes to get a promotion as when I talked with my supervisor it was always about needing "5 years" of experience and never about what we can do.

Advice to Senior Management

Take better care of your people and give some opportunity for growth and development. This bird is going to fly to another tree very soon because its not fun in this one.

Pros

In comparison to many of the other stuffy, super conservative life insurers in Canada, Equitable has been making some inroads. The level of politics, the rat-race, and the dog-eat-dog mentality is generally better than peers (far better than most). The compensation is very fair. Expectations are high - challenging, but not impossible. Pride in the company is very strong and quite contagious. Senior Management is generally very approachable (although a bit on the shy side?) Tremendously capable quantity/quality of people in the mid-to-upper management ranks for the most part - including some very progressive thinkers. Strong leveraging of technology for an organization of this size - aren't buried in a myriad of conflicting systems.

Cons

Based on the size of the company we should be able to move further and faster from a culture perspective. There is an industry opportunity to be a 'less-traditional' life insurer and Equitable should be the one. People management capabilities are acceptable, but dated - HR policy tends to be behind where we, as a medium-sized, high-capability organization should be. We do lack a "rah-rah" people leader - a "Chief Morale Officer" type of person.

Advice to Senior Management

Get out in front of the people in an engaging, morale boosting manner. We aren't buried in bureaucracy and should leverage that to kick it to the next level.

Pros

Good pay, good benefits, comfortable work environment, and senior management very committed to continuous improvement, such as when they brought in Tatham Group for a 5-year process re-engineering project involving all employees at every level.

Cons

They are a bit behind the rest of the pack when it comes to technology...the last to get a website for insurers to file automated claims. This can be a tad embarrassing when you must be the face of the company and field calls from plan members. But they are catching up fast.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen more to the users of the new system regarding all the bugs that need ironing out.