Oscar Zimmerman

Oscar Zimmerman is Chief Executive Officer of ScotiaLife, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank), a large Canadian based multinational with a presence in roughly 50 countries. He joined Scotiabank in 1992 as Senior Vice President, Scotia Insurance, with global responsibility for developing bancassurance. He has recently been appointed Senior Vice-President and Managing Director, Corporate Insurance, focusing on corporate oversight, insurance risk management and reinsurance business development as well as supporting the Bank’s Domestic and International Retail Insurance teams. Oscar is currently a board member of other Bank owned insurers in Canada, Jamaica and Trinidad.

Oscar has focused on leveraging the bank’s strengths in distribution, customer service and risk management and has led the bank to significantly expand its insurance businesses through a combination of building up insurance brokerage, affinity distribution/reinsurance programs, as well as stand alone Life and P & C risk taking through direct insurance and reinsurance subsidiaries both acquired and denovo.
Oscar’s early career was spent at a large Canadian multinational life insurer where he had senior roles in corporate actuarial, asset liability management, individual product pricing, as well as running the “money’ businesses, U.S. Pensions, Canada Pensions and U.S. Variable Insurance.

A Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institution of Actuaries, as well as a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, Oscar is a past member of the advisory board for Assuris (formerly Comcorp, the Canadian Life Industry Consumer Protection Agency), as well as a past member (2005 – 2007) of the Board of the CLHIA (Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association), and was a founding Board member of CAFII (Canadian Association of Financial Institution in Insurance.