Summer Student - Product Innovation

Reporting to the Manager of Insurance Products and Product Innovation, the Summer Student position is part of the Insurance Products and Innovation Team within Product Innovation. The Team is primarily responsible for maintaining, enhancing and supporting AFSC insurance products such as Annual and Perennial Crop Insurance and Livestock Price Insurance. This position will gain exposure to how the insurance products are designed, maintained and delivered a Provincial Delivery Agent of Business Risk Management Programs. The work focuses on research, development and delivery efforts but may have peripheral exposure to Policy work, external vendors, Lending and partnerships as well as other areas of the organization depending on the interests of the successful candidate.

The role will support these teams with research, work on projects with other team members, extract data, and write and communicate results and other product related functions.

What will your growth opportunities look like in this role?

• Gain skills in research design and execution, innovation, product development, data analysis, vendor management, networking, market research, working on a team to achieve corporate goals and other skills in areas of interest to the individual.
• Learn about risk management on farms in Alberta
• Gain knowledge of how Federal and Provincial Governments deliver Business Risk Management programming to farm clients.
• Work with highly creative and Innovative co-workers with potential for knowledge transfer in their areas of expertise
• Exposure to agriculture technology and its application at AFSC

What will you be responsible for?

• Support other team members via workload relief and partnering with them on projects
• Support AFSC Wide Innovation on the Innovation team including involvement in projects assessing the fit of ideas that may solve AFSC business problems (e.g. assessment of wildlife damage to crops using aerial imagery)
• Pull Data out of AFSC systems (pivot tables) and other sources and analyze for use in product design, Policy work and other activities
• Organize events
• Support digital records management
• Communicate work to the organization by helping the team write up project results, create proposals, communications to branch staff and other written and oral communications.

What are we looking for from you?

• Self-motivation and drive toward goals
• Creativity and problem solving
• Ability to produce results in a work from home environment
• Balance and prioritization - Ability to balance multiple competing priorities in a tight timeline.
• Interpersonal skills - Ability to work with external and internal stakeholders with the purpose of determining emerging trends affecting our clients.
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written. E.g. ability to create written materials and presentations in a style that recognizes the audience.
• Analytical Skills like critical thinking and data manipulation and analysis
• Research Skills - ability to answer a research question in a defendable way and taking a project from start to finish
• It is critical that this position is comfortable interacting with AFSC staff across the organization
• Working on teams in a collaborative environment
• Represent AFSC well when liaising with vendors and other external parties (e.g. clients, tech companies, etc…)
• Basic knowledge of products offered by AFSC.
• High level of competency with MS Word, Excel
• Ability to use AFSC's desktop suite of software including: Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint.
• Quantitative and Qualitative analysis skills are highly valuable in the role.

About AFSC

For over 80 years Agriculture Financial Services (AFSC) has provided Alberta's agricultural producers and agribusinesses with loans, crop insurance and farm income disaster assistance. At AFSC, we're proud of the work we do to help build a strong, growing and diversified agriculture and agri-food industry in Alberta.Many AFSC team members are also producers and know first-hand the challenges and rewards Alberta producers face.

https://afsc.ca/about-afsc/