A self-described “policy wonk,” Frank Swedlove jumped from earning a master’s degree in economics at the University of Toronto into the civil service in Ottawa. For 25 years, while holding positions in the upper reaches of the Finance, Industry and Energy departments, he participated in most of the major financial policy debates in Canada.

In July, Swedlove joined the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association in Toronto as its president, with a mandate to connect the insurance industry with federal, provincial and international regulators on issues key to the industry.

It is a role Swedlove is well equipped to fill. His understanding of the levers and pulleys in the federal government machine and the same sort of understanding of major international organizations, as well as his natural affinity for public policy debate, makes him a good fit for the challenges facing the association.

“I still feel part of the debate, just from a different place,” he says of his new role at the CLHIA. “We will be asked by levels of government federally, provincially and internationally to participate in [various deliberations], so my familiarity with this is important.”

During Swedlove’s years in government, he was involved in many major debates, including deliberations about foreign ownership in the energy sector in the 1970s — some of the same arguments are rearing their heads today, he notes — as well as the North American free trade agreement and the great bank merger debate of 1998.

Unfortunately for anybody looking for insight and gossip about what goes on during these closed-door meetings, Swedlove is also very discreet. Yes, they were all sensitive files, he says with a smile: “And they still are.”

Ottawa-born Swedlove is also an avid tennis player who hasn’t had much opportunity for a match lately. That’s because he’s spent so much time shuttling among Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. The CLHIA’s membership is made up of life insurance companies, but the association’s agenda is sometimes carried out in concert with advisors in the insurance distribution channels, he says, as it is right now. Provincial regulators are currently absorbing input from the industry about point-of-sale disclosure documents for segregated funds, known as the proposed Framework 81-406.

The CLHIA favours clearer language and communication to investors, Swedlove says, but insurers also need to do a better job of helping regulators understand that segregated funds are simply not the same as mutual funds. “There’s some view out there that segregated funds are essentially the same product as mutual funds. Well, they’re not. And our job is to explain the differences,” says Swedlove, noting that seg funds are insurance products that guarantee part of the capital investment component.

“You don’t own a piece of the segregated fund,” he says. “You have a contract that describes an obligation by the company, which is a regulated institution. That is different from a mutual fund, for which there is no obligation. You just own a piece of the fund [in the latter case].”

As part of the bigger domestic picture, Swedlove says, part of the CLHIA’s role is to educate the non-insurance regulatory community and other institutions that are not familiar with the insurance industry. “We need to explain ourselves better as an industry,” he says, to communities that have a say in the operation of life insurers.

The same idea applies internationally. Swedlove retired from the Department of Finance in April 2006 and, a few months later, took the president’s position — the first Canadian to do so — at the Financial Action Task Force, the Paris-based international body that advises member countries on international standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

“Those standards affect our companies all the time. It’s important for us to find ways to be engaged on those international issues, because by the time they reach Canada, it is much more difficult to provide input and effect change,” says Swedlove. “We have an obligation to know what’s going on internationally and to provide input to other insurance associations around the world.”

The FATF, for example, might set international standards for due diligence on client information that are impractical from a regulatory and market perspective, given conditions inside the country. “Where does the client’s money come from; who he is —these kinds of issues,” says Swedlove. “All these procedures have to reflect reality.”

@page_break@Except for a couple of brief stints as an Ottawa tour guide as a student, Swedlove, who is married with two children, worked for the federal government until 2006. He spent a few months as a consultant, both independently and for Toronto-based Campbell Strategies, before arriving at the CLHIA. Swedlove has not held even a junior position in the insurance industry, but he has come to understand insurance companies and the issues they care about through the many hours he has spent on various task forces and committees that helped shape the financial services industry in Canada and internationally.

Unlike industry executives who look back on careers of mergers and acquisitions, or on the many private companies they carried to market, Swedlove numbers among his career highlights the positions he has held in organizations that have shaped major public policy — such as on the World Trade Organization or working on sensitive Government of Canada files. “There are a few highlights,” he says.

In 1997, he chaired a working group of WTO countries that defined the rules for trading financial services and helped to open doors for insurance companies to do business in China. The rules were drafted to provide Canadian financial services companies in foreign countries with equal and fair treatment relative to the domestic industries.

“That was a major achievement,” Swedlove says, “because we started with a blank page. No one ever thought of financial services as a tradable item.”

In a similar role some years before that, he was the chief negotiator for Canadian financial services when NAFTA was being negotiated by the Mulroney government.

More recently, as general director of the Financial Sector Policy Branch, Swedlove carried through Bill C-8, a major overhaul of the financial services sector. “It was the second-largest piece of legislation in Canadian parliamentary history,” says Swedlove, who rose to deputy minister in Finance. The largest, he notes, was a trade bill. “It was a major achievement getting that legislation written.”

Bill C-8 received royal assent in 2001. It established the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and amended certain acts in relation to financial institutions.

Issues that were on the CLHIA’s back burner during Swedlove’s career in Ottawa include “continual” input on the insurance industry’s role inside Canada’s medical system. The CLHIA has also made submissions to the federal government ahead of the 2008 budget asking for equal access to the registered education savings plan system. Insurers also want lower taxes and changes to the deductibility of disability insurance.

“I don’t think it was so much helping people [that motivated me],” says Swedlove. “That was a good part of the job. It’s just that I’m a big fan of government service. I believe the government has a lot to offer young people — in terms of careers doing meaningful work and meeting interesting people in exciting industries involved with issues that matter.” IE