If it weren't for his wife, Joseph Iannicelli would not own an Alfa Romeo named Sophia.

Nor would he be the president and CEO of Montreal-based Standard Life Assurance Co. of Canada, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year.

His wife talked him out of buying yet another Mustang for his collection of American muscle cars, and many years earlier, she talked him into applying for a job in the insurance industry.

Now, he loves the sector that he once loathed.

Peter McCabe, Business Edge
Standard Life of Canada CEO Joseph Iannicelli's parents encouraged him to pursue higher education and a career in financial services.

"It's an industry where you help people," says Iannicelli, who also helps people by working with several charitable associations.

He learned his helpful ways by selling shoes ...

1. When did your parents emigrate from Italy?

"My dad travelled back and forth from Naples to Canada and the States for a while. Whenever the money ran out, he went back to Italy to work, and then decided at 33 he should get married. He went back to Naples. My mom was 27 at the time. My dad was one of 18 kids. My mom was one of eight. He had grown up with her in the neighbourhood. They got married in early '61. Then my dad came to Canada, earned enough money to send a ticket for my mom. I was conceived in Italy and born in October of 1961. It was an interesting journey. I travelled an ocean in my mom's big belly, landed in Halifax, took the train to Toronto and I was born."

2. What type of factory did your father work in?

"His very first job, typical immigrant, was as a labourer in the construction trade, but he thought it was too hard on his back and his knees. He was digging ditches.

Nothing wrong with it, I guess, but he just thought he wanted something in a factory (that was) a little bit more controlled in terms of hours. That's when he found a job at (tea company) Thomas J. Lipton. I think his first salary was $65 a week. He worked there from 1963 right through to when he died, on April 6, 1988. The only day he took a sick day was the day he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he never went back to work. His horse sense had come to him, I guess."

3. Where did your mother work?

"She was making fibreglass boats for a while and then she was making wallets. I remember the boats vividly, because (the factory) was relatively close to where we lived. She was lining the boats with some kind of fibreglass. I remember taking my cheap hockey sticks from Canadian Tire and giving them to her, and she would coat them with 25 layers of fibreglass. When I was a kid, before the plastic (super) blades, we used to have street hockey sticks and the good ones would have fibreglass on them. Those things were indestructible. They lasted me the whole street hockey season."

4. How did your parents influence your career choices?

Joseph Iannicelli

"I always wanted to be an actor. I loved theatre, I loved acting and I loved television. Throughout elementary and high school, I always played the lead in plays. I remember talking to my counsellor in high school (about an acting career), and I told my parents about it. They both said I was out of my mind. My dad said, 'Absolutely not!' He showed me his hands and he said, 'You don't want these hands.' His hands were full of calluses from (working with) concrete, paint and all of the rest of that stuff. He said, 'You want soft hands, and you want to carry a pencil and not a hammer, and you want to wear a shirt and tie and not a uniform.' No disrespect to anyone who wears a uniform, but that was his way of saying, 'You don't want to be me.' I think he had Grade 3 education. My mom has Grade 1. There was absolutely no choice - I had to go to university. We did not discuss the possibility of not going to university."

5. How were you steered toward insurance?

"I always wanted a finance-related career, but I didn't know anything about the insurance industry. I fell into it because, when I graduated and got my first degree in '84, it was quite difficult to find a job in Toronto. I did not have any connections or contacts, so I actually worked retail for a year - selling shoes - and I went back to York to do a second degree. Then I met the woman who eventually became my wife, Mary. She had an aunt who worked in the insurance industry at the time at Canada Life ... So I applied to Canada Life and used her aunt as a reference and actually got an interview. I got my first job at Canada Life underwriting U.S. risk."

6. How did selling shoes prepare you for the job that you have now?

"Everyone should have at least one year of retail in their life - early. It helps you deal with different customers' attitudes. You learn the sales process, and I believe life is one big sale, no matter what you do. It teaches you responsibility. How to dress properly. How to deal with different personalities. How to understand people's needs and talk them into something that you believe that they need, even though they may not think that at the time. It's a great experience overall."

7. How did you end up joining Standard Life from Canada Life?

"When I was at Canada Life, I was underwriting U.S. risk for group schemes. After a couple of years, (because) I kind of always had sales and marketing in me, I wanted to become a salesperson at Canada Life. But at the time, they were not hiring people who did not have direct (insurance) sales experience. So I had to leave. I applied and received a job at a (health benefits) company called CIGNA. My initial plan was to be there a couple of years, learn the sales process and learn about some of the products. At least I would have some sales experience. I ended up being there for about four years, because I really liked it and I was doing well. I was a big fish in a small pond and quite influential. And then Standard Life was looking to expand their Toronto office, and they were looking for a senior sales representative. A placement agency contacted me and one thing led to another."

8. What was your vision for the company after you were appointed CEO?

"I saw unrealized potential. In the short term, we were in the process of de-mutualizing. We're listed on the London Stock Exchange, but at the time we had to prepare the company - globally - to de-mutualize ... But the longer-term vision, which we're entering now, is the unrealized potential for a company like Standard Life. As you know, we operate in an environment where there are three large carriers and they're very good. We're the fourth-largest insurance carrier in Canada. Canada is the fourth-largest pension market in the world and we're known as a pension provider. Yet, at the time, we were focused on being good everywhere, so we were concentrating our efforts on deploying capital where we thought we needed to grow because we were smaller. I said, 'If you want to be good everywhere, you're probably going to be excellent nowhere.' So we wanted to focus on where we were excellent and make sure that things that we were not so good at did not hurt us."

9. How are you trying to raise your company's profile?

"Maybe we should talk about why. It's a pretty aggressive approach for us, for a couple of reasons. Because we're not listed in Canada, we are not a widely held stock here. The general population does not have a vested interest in knowing what we do or who we are, in that we are not part of their investments generally - unlike our competition, that are indeed widely held stocks. Branding and credibility seem to go hand in hand. We need to manufacture our own exposure. We need to push who we are. We need to tell people what we do."

10. How has the U.S. asset-backed commercial paper crisis affected your company?

"I am absolutely thrilled to report that we have zero exposure to any of that stuff. If you go back to Standard Life's investment philosophy, we're a pretty prudent company when it comes to investing other people's money."

11. What do you see as significant changes that have occurred since you joined the company, and since you took over as president and CEO?

"One of the things that we've seen is a larger focus on the talent of the organization. Proper acquisition of talent. Proper deployment of talent. Letting the people do their job. And proper development of key talent.

The industry has changed for sure, because there's been a little bit more consolidation, certainly from the managers' side. We've seen some new products hit the market, like guaranteed minimum-withdrawal benefits that have done quite well in the marketplace."

12. What future changes do you foresee?

"I'm a big believer in studying demographics. I believe that demographics will drive everything, whether it's purchasing habits or other things. You're going to see the whole Boomer bubble proceed towards the payout phase of their life cycle.

"The early Boomers, like myself, who are going on 45, 46, 47 years old, realize they may outlive their assets based on the lifestyle that they expect and based on their time horizon until retirement, so they're going to be in a combined preservation-and-accumulation phase. Then you're going to see the generation behind - the Y generation - that is less concerned about accumulation of assets for retirement. But they still need to accumulate assets for something, whether it's purchasing a home or funding their lifestyle. So new products will be required. On the other side is legislative change. You may or may not think there's something coming down that will affect your business. But something like the tax-free spending account, I think that's going to come in. It won't replace the RRSP plan, but it will certainly complement it. Banks and other financial institutions, including insurance companies, are scrambling to make sure that they have a product that will cater to this new market that will be emerging, we believe, in early 2009. That was created by the government."

13. What is your biggest fear?

"It's not interest rates, which could affect our bond portfolios. It's not legislative change. It's not U.S. or global trends that may affect us in Canada. My biggest concern right now for Standard Life is the unrealized potential, because I think we have a unique opportunity in Canada to cater to a growing, more educated consumer base in products that we have, that we believe that they'll need on the retirement side or on the wealth-management side."

14. What is your company doing to prepare for a possible disaster that you would still be responsible for covering?

"We have very comprehensive disaster-recovery programs at the local level, but also at the global level. We just had a meeting of the group executives, which are all the (Standard Life) CEOs right across the world. We had an exercise where, if we indeed had a disaster somewhere, what would be the plan to mobilize? We actually went into a simulated disaster. It was quite interesting. More locally, we have all kinds of disaster-recovery programs with offsite support."

15. What is the hardest part of your job?

"Juggling all of the balls in the air and making sure that none of them drop. We have three product lines that we have to grow. We have risk policies, we have control policies, we have a regulator and we're a subsidiary of a U.K. company, so we have to adopt U.K. policies into Canada. We're morphing into a global organization. We're building up the talent strategy. We're beefing up the research areas to make sure that we know what's happening in the marketplace in terms of training so that we can be there.

"The hardest job is making sure that all of these things are aligned and moving forward."

16. You mentioned the U.K. What in the U.K. could be adapted to Canada in the future?

"Companies like Standard Life, and we're not unique, we're leveraging the expertise that we have globally and we're seeing where it could be applied in local markets. Standard Life used to be a series of companies linked together in a home office in Edinburgh. We're morphing now into one global organization, and we're developing concepts now like centres of excellence. We look to see what is done somewhere - and what is done very well somewhere. If that something is also done somewhere else, why duplicate the effort? Take where you're excellent - wherever it happens to be - and apply it elsewhere. A good example of that is our studio in Canada. Our studio in Canada does design work and studio work for all of the communication and educational materials that we distribute to our customers here in Canada. We've won awards for it. It has been determined that our Canadian operation will be the centre of excellence for the group of (Standard Life) companies. The studio in Canada is now producing work for Germany, Asia and the U.K., because we do it better than them. Another example is our eastern-looking strategy. We recently launched a new feature to our administration system and pensions that has retirement calculators and all kinds of different features, online transaction capabilities and so forth. A lot of that work was adapted from the work that was already being done in the U.K. for a couple of years. It's old news in the U.K., but it's leading edge in Canada."

17. Why do three companies dominate the Canadian insurance industry?

"They grew through acquisitions. They were leaders in the consolidation in the industry. Eventually, they all had between 18-22 per cent (of) market share. If you look at market share annually, most large companies do not grow market share. Their margins get better, but they do not grow from 22 per cent market share to 28 per cent to 30 per cent. They hover, more or less, around the same market share. But they've grown there through acquisitions, whereas a company like Standard Life, we've had an organic strategy. We had one small acquisition many years ago ... but we generally grow one customer at a time. We believe there's space for other companies, especially if you're good at what you do. There's always going to be room in a crowded market. Even though there are three large carriers, it's a 'me-too' type of industry. If you had a product that is that good, or a service that is that good, it is going to be duplicated relatively quickly by your competition. How do you compete? You try to set up a product and you try to set up, not barriers to entry, because that won't happen, but barriers to duplication of your product. You try to stay one step ahead."

18. What do you do to relax when you're not working with your company or all of these other organizations with which you're involved?

"I absolutely adore my job. It's not work. I relax at work just by working sometimes. Over and above that, realizing that there's somewhat of a balance (required), I'm a big believer in giving back to society. We're a good corporate citizen, but I think everybody should contribute to society in some way - whether it's time, money or both. That's why I'm involved in some of these organizations. I'm also bringing my kids along, so they understand the importance of helping others as well. Because I travel so much and the work day is so long, I just try to spend as much time as I can with my kids."

19. If you weren't running Standard Life of Canada anymore, what would you be doing?

"If I had a choice, I would do something with cars. I absolutely love American muscle cars. But if I wasn't doing this particular job and still was building a career, I would still be in the financial-services industry. I think it's a great industry. We do great work for a lot of people."

20. What kind of cars do you have?

"I'm not sure you can print them all. But I have a few that I love. I have a 2007 Mustang Shelby GT 900. That's one of my babies. I have a 2004 Mustang Cobra convertible. It's a turbo-charged one. I have a 1987 pickup, that used to be my father-in-law's, that I'm making into a hotrod, and my latest baby is way off what I'm used to - a 1994 Alfa Romeo Spider. I got talked into that one (by) my wife. I was looking at another Mustang, and she said, 'Not another Mustang, Joseph.' "

Joseph Iannicelli

* Title: President/CEO, Standard Life Insurance Co. of Canada.

* Born/raised/age: Toronto/46.

* Education: Commerce and administrative studies degrees from York University.

* Family: Married, three children.

* Career: After graduating with a commerce degree, Iannicelli sold shoes for a year. He then completed his second degree and, with help from his wife's aunt, landed a job as an underwriter with Canada Life. In 1992, he joined Standard Life as a senior sales rep. In 1995, he was named the Toronto regional sales manager. Three years later, he was promoted to vice-president of marketing. He then became senior vice-president for the entire company and was promoted to president and CEO in 2005.

* Moonlighting: Iannicelli serves as a director with the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He also chairs the Assuris industry advisory committee and is a member of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association's standing committee on standards and marketplace relations, as well as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

* Charitable Efforts: Iannicelli is vice-president of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute Foundation in Montreal and is a member of the Greater Toronto YMCA's Open Doors fund council and the Italian-Canadian Community Foundation of Quebec.

* Passions: American muscle cars.

Standard Life Insurance Co. of Canada

* Brass: Jocelyn Proteau, chairman of board; Joseph Iannicelli, president and CEO.

* Profile: Montreal-based Standard Life is a Canadian subsidiary of the Scottish publicly traded parent of a similar name. Founded in 1833, Standard Life of Canada has 2,000 employees with other offices in Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, London,Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. While selling traditional insurance products, it focuses on providing wealth-management services to individuals, groups and institutions.

* Stats: Standard Life of Canada recorded a net income of $204 million in 2007. The firm has 1.3 million clients, including group insurance and pension plan participants, along with 14,000 institutional and individual shareholders. It manages $38 billion worth of assets.

* Recent Stock Price (SL.L): £257. 52-Week Range: £185.20-£274.50.

* Website: www.standardlife.ca * HQ: 1245 Sherbrooke St., Montreal, H3G 1G3 * Phone: (514) 499-8855