As the Senior Director of Individual Underwriting, Russell Shaw is responsible for the risk decisions for all fully underwritten CI and DI business at RBC Insurance in addition to having overall responsibility for the individual insurance operations.

Like many professionals in the insurance industry, underwriting was not his first career choice. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor’s degree in Criminology, Russ worked with, “youthful offenders” at a detention and custody facility with a longer term vision of pursuing a career in the field of probation and ultimately law school. Four years later, he found himself in search of new challenges and in 1998, took a job as an underwriting trainee with Paul Revere/Provident, now RBC Insurance. He has occupied several roles within the RBCI organization in Underwriting, Corporate Underwriting, “subject matter expert” for a large scale project, and most recently, Senior Underwriting Director. Russ is very active in the underwriting community and is a past board member of the Canadian Institute of Underwriters and the Canadian Association of Living Benefits Underwriters. He currently co-chairs the Canadian Living Benefits Seminar board of directors.

When he’s not working, Russ enjoys travelling, cycling, golfing and snowboarding.