Sylvie Paquette has spent her entire career in the P&C insurance industry in Canada. She joined Desjardins Group in 1984 and held a variety of progressively senior roles within the organization before being promoted in 2008 to Senior Executive Vice-President and General Manager of the Group’s P&C insurance division as well as President and Chief Operating Officer of Desjardins General Insurance Group (DGIG). During Ms. Paquette’s tenure as President and COO, she spearheaded Desjardins’ acquisition of State Farm’s Canadian operations in 2015. She retired from Desjardins Group in December 2016.

Ms. Paquette has been actively involved in key industry associations. In recent years, she was a Board member of the Insurance Bureau of Canada (Chair in 2015 and 2016), of the General Insurance Statistical Agency, of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction and of the Centre for Insurance and Financial Services Development (Chair from 2009 to 2014). Throughout her career, Ms. Paquette has co-chaired major fundraising campaigns, and she sat on the Board of Laval University’s Foundation until recently. Ms. Paquette is a graduate of the Actuarial Science program at Laval University. She is also certified as a corporate director (Administrateur de sociétés certifié (ASC)) by the Collège des administrateurs de sociétés.