I don’t know what is going on with the insurance industry in New Brunswick. There is certainly a Frank McKenna factor but there is much more going on here than just TD Insurance.
The industry added another more than 600 jobs in 2010 and total insurance industry employment is up by 49% in just five years (2006-2010). Nationally, the growth rate in insurance industry employment is under 6% over the five years. In total, the industry has added over 1,600 jobs and that equates to close to $75 million in new payroll each year in the province.
In 2006, there were 19% less people employed in the insurance sector here compared to Canada as a whole. Now it is 14% above the national level.
This is one of the few industries where New Brunswick is beating most other provinces in terms of employment intensity.
Much of the work is customer service but there is a growing amount of regional office activity.
Might not be a bad idea for the Liberals to keep this in mind when they are slamming the insurance industry. As I said before, insurance is a regulated product and governments have a responsibility to regulate in a fair and responsible way. But hammering one of the growth sectors to get some Twitter titillation is not a good idea.
At a certain point over the next ten years Moncton is going to hit a tipping point and become a regional centre for financial services. At that point some downtown office buildings will go up and the city will be transformed.
It’s fairly predictable, in that the best way to ward off public insurance is to make sure you at least have a sizeable workforce in the province. When you consider just how many millions of dollars the insurance industry has saved in the province from the low corporate tax rate, then employment is ‘quid pro quo’. The anti insurance sentiment (and rhetoric) has been building for years, so without a labour force, there is really nothing to hold back a government from hitting the tipping point and making insurance public.