Kim Stanley

Insurance is in her DNA

There aren’t many people who can boast three generations of life insurance in their blood. But Kim Stanley, Regional Vice President Sales, Individual Life and Savings, Ontario and the Atlantic, for Desjardins Financial Security, can.

“It’s in the DNA – chromosome 13 I think it is,” laughs Stanley.

 

It all started with her grandfather, who ran a managing general agency, followed by her mother, Mary Lou Taylor, who joined her father in the late 1970s. Stanley seemed to be the obvious next in line when she found it difficult to find a job in her chosen field of broadcast journalism. Try it out, she was encouraged: give it six months. “I did and here I am today.”

But what kept Stanley in insurance? Both her grandfather and her mother were successful individual advisors and her mother asked her to open the brokerage side of the family agency. Starting a business from scratch was the kind of challenge Stanley just couldn’t walk away from.

It was then that she heard about the passion many advisors have in helping their clients and it was the main reason she went for her life licence, then worked on her designations (CLU, CFP and CHFC) and volunteered at the Life Underwriters Association of Canada (LUAC) the predecessor to Advocis.

Stanley bought the agency from her mother in 1997 and ran it on her own until she sold it in 2003.

“It wasn’t fun anymore,” said Stanley regarding the sale. MGAs were growing and some insurers were disappearing under demutualization. Rather than become a boutique operation or get big really quickly, she decided to get out and work at home as a consultant. She dropped her mutual fund and branch manager’s licences and went to work as Vice President, Field Sales at Penncorp Life Insurance Company. Then she moved to Desjardins, originally as Director, Distribution Ontario and the Atlantic.

Biggest challenges

She says her two biggest challenges were being a single mom while working at a career and trying to crack through the male-dominated world of the life insurance industry. “Being a female, it was the standard thing – we had to prove ourselves over and over.”

So Stanley immersed herself in the industry and listened to some of the best talk about their business practices. Not everything applied to her business per se, but the gist of what they had to say was valuable.

She particularly garnered wisdom from some of the great women of the time – including her mother.

“I also had a belief in myself and the fact that I had two young daughters at home who relied on me – that was probably the biggest motivation of all.”

Stanley became involved with the Toronto chapter of Advocis, volunteering to write for, and then running, the magazine. In 1994 she became the third female president of the chapter (her mother was the first), and chaired the national Advocis committee in its support for Cystic Fibrosis. She then became president of the Halton Peel CLU chapter and became active in promoting professionalism.

Her advice to young people? “My first question would be: what’s your passion? Because my experience is that the people who succeed in this industry have a passion to help people and that will overcome everything,” she says. “This is a very challenging career. It’s about helping people recognize where they can best plan to help their families and themselves and give them peace of mind.”

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