How to Apply to Great-West Lifeco

Key Takeaways

Great-West Lifeco is a holding company; you are actually applying to Canada Life, Empower Retirement, Putnam Investments, Irish Life, or Canada Life UK. Each subsidiary uses a different ATS — SuccessFactors at Canada Life, Workday at Empower, Franklin Templeton's ATS at Putnam during transition.
Power Corporation of Canada controls roughly 71% of Great-West Lifeco. The ownership structure shapes the institution's long planning horizons, low senior leadership turnover, and conservative pace.
Hiring is structured, multi-stage, and deliberate. Three to four rounds is typical, and the gap between final interview and offer commonly runs one to three weeks. Pushing for faster decisions misreads the institution.
Tailor for each subsidiary's domain language: insurance and bilingual Canadian financial services for Canada Life; US retirement recordkeeping and ERISA fluency for Empower; Boston buy-side investment process for Putnam.
Credentials matter and are checked. SOA/CIA exam progress for actuaries, CFA charter or progress for investment roles, CIP or LLQP for licensed Canadian roles, FRM or PRM for risk roles. List them precisely.
Total compensation is strong and tilts toward long-term benefits — defined benefit pension components in some Canada Life roles, defined contribution matching, employee share purchase plans, and comprehensive group benefits. Value the full package, not only base salary.
Tenure and stability are read as positive signals, not as lack of ambition. Frame your career narrative around long-arc progression rather than sprint optimization.

About Great-West Lifeco

Great-West Lifeco Inc. (TSX: GWO) is a Winnipeg-headquartered international financial services holding company with roughly 32,000 employees and approximately CAD 50 billion in annual revenue. From its head office at 100 Osborne Street North in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the company sits at the centre of one of Canada's most powerful private corporate ecosystems: Power Corporation of Canada — controlled by the Desmarais family of Montreal — owns roughly 71% of Great-West Lifeco's outstanding voting shares. That ownership reality is the single most important contextual fact for any candidate. Great-West Lifeco is publicly traded, but it is run with the long planning horizons, conservatism, and family-business sensibility of a controlled company. Decisions move on a multi-year cadence, not a quarterly one, and senior leadership turnover is unusually low. Paul Mahon has been President and CEO since 2013, an extraordinary tenure by industry standards. Great-West Lifeco itself is a holding company; the actual work happens inside its operating subsidiaries. In Canada, Canada Life provides individual and group life and health insurance, wealth management, and retirement solutions to roughly one in three Canadians, with major employment hubs in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, London (Ontario), and Regina. In the United States, Empower Retirement — headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado — is the second-largest retirement plan recordkeeper in the country after Fidelity, administering more than USD 1.6 trillion in assets across roughly 19 million participants. In January 2024, Great-West Lifeco completed the acquisition of Putnam Investments from Franklin Templeton, adding a Boston-based asset management arm that complements Empower's distribution scale with proprietary investment manufacturing. In Europe, Irish Life dominates the Republic of Ireland's life and pensions market, and the 2023 acquisition of the UK individual protection business of Allianz strengthened the group's position in British insurance. Each subsidiary recruits independently, which means a job seeker targeting 'Great-West Lifeco' is really targeting a portfolio of distinct employers with different ATS systems, different cultural defaults, and different local labour markets. Canada Life is a Canadian financial services workplace: bilingual where the role demands it (English/French), unionized in pockets of group benefits administration, deeply structured around regulatory compliance, and culturally polite in the way Winnipeg and Toronto financial services tend to be. Empower in the US is faster-paced and more sales-and-tech-oriented, reflecting its role in a fee-competitive recordkeeping market. Putnam in Boston is a traditional asset manager — buy-side, performance-driven, with a small headcount and concentrated decision-making. Irish Life and the UK protection business operate to local norms. The honest framing: working for the Great-West Lifeco group means working for a stable, well-capitalized, conservatively run institution with strong benefits and unusually long employee tenures, but it also means working inside a controlled corporate structure where pace is measured, hierarchy is real, and the dominant cultural reference points are Canadian financial services regulation and the priorities of the controlling shareholder. Candidates who come from fast-moving consumer technology backgrounds frequently underestimate how different that operating tempo is, and frequently misread Winnipeg's understated, relationship-first business culture as slowness when it is in fact deliberateness. Great-West Lifeco's ongoing CONNECT cloud transformation — modernizing core insurance and recordkeeping platforms on Microsoft Azure and AWS — is creating real technology hiring across the group, but the work itself sits inside a regulated, audited, change-managed environment that values predictability over velocity.

Application Process

1
Identify which subsidiary owns the role you actually want
Identify which subsidiary owns the role you actually want. Searching 'Great-West Lifeco' on LinkedIn surfaces postings from Canada Life, Empower, Putnam, Irish Life, Canada Life UK, and the holding company itself. Each subsidiary has its own careers portal and its own ATS. The holding company at greatwestlifeco.com directs candidates to the operating company sites — there is no central applications portal, and applying through one subsidiary does not propagate your profile to the others.
2
For Canada Life and Great-West Lifeco corporate roles in Canada, apply through c
For Canada Life and Great-West Lifeco corporate roles in Canada, apply through careers.canadalife.com, which routes job search to jobs.canadalife.com and authentication into SAP SuccessFactors under the company instance 'thegreatweP2'. The SuccessFactors profile you create is reusable across every Canada Life and Great-West Lifeco corporate posting in Canada and Ireland.
3
For Empower Retirement roles in the United States, apply through empower
For Empower Retirement roles in the United States, apply through empower.com/about/careers, which routes to jobs.empower.com and ultimately to the Workday tenant at empower.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com/empower. Workday accounts are separate from SuccessFactors — you will need to create a fresh profile.
4
For Putnam Investments roles in Boston, expect to be redirected to franklintempl
For Putnam Investments roles in Boston, expect to be redirected to franklintempletoncareers.com during the post-acquisition transition. Putnam was acquired in January 2024, and ATS migration in asset management acquisitions typically takes 18–24 months. Confirm with the Putnam recruiter which system your application actually lives in before assuming the recruiter side will see it.
5
Build a SuccessFactors profile that mirrors your resume exactly: SuccessFactors'
Build a SuccessFactors profile that mirrors your resume exactly: SuccessFactors's parser populates application fields automatically, but it makes characteristic mistakes with employment dates spanning multiple roles at the same employer and with non-standard section headings. Verify every field after auto-fill and correct anything the parser got wrong before submitting.
6
Tailor each application to the specific posting
Tailor each application to the specific posting. Canada Life recruiters explicitly screen for evidence that the candidate read the job description — generic resumes are filtered out at the first review pass, and the SuccessFactors keyword match scoring rewards candidates who mirror the language of the requisition.
7
Submit a cover letter even when the field is marked optional, particularly for a
Submit a cover letter even when the field is marked optional, particularly for actuarial, underwriting, claims, and senior corporate roles. Canada Life's recruitment culture values written communication, and a strong cover letter compensates for resume gaps in a way that simply submitting a CV cannot.
8
Expect an initial application acknowledgement within 24 hours via SuccessFactors
Expect an initial application acknowledgement within 24 hours via SuccessFactors's automated email, followed by silence for 2–4 weeks while the recruiter completes initial screening. Canada Life's hiring committees meet on weekly cadences and a normal time-to-first-interview is 3–5 weeks for non-urgent roles. Empower in the US moves faster, typically 1–3 weeks.
9
If you are applying from outside Canada for a Canadian role, address work author
If you are applying from outside Canada for a Canadian role, address work authorization explicitly in your cover letter. Canada Life sponsors work permits selectively for hard-to-fill actuarial, IT architecture, and quantitative roles, but it does not sponsor for the bulk of customer service or operations openings. Stating your authorization status up front prevents the screen from stalling at the document-checking step.
10
For bilingual postings in Quebec and at federal-jurisdiction roles, French profi
For bilingual postings in Quebec and at federal-jurisdiction roles, French proficiency is tested. The Quebec subsidiary of Canada Life (with offices in Montreal) operates in French, and customer-facing roles serving Quebec clients require working fluency. Self-assess honestly — Canada Life uses standard CEFR-style verbal assessments for bilingual roles.
11
Once invited to interview, request the names and titles of every interviewer in
Once invited to interview, request the names and titles of every interviewer in advance. Canada Life and Empower both routinely share the panel composition with candidates, and using the prep window to research each interviewer's LinkedIn profile is expected, not opportunistic.
12
After the final interview, expect a 1–3 week gap before a verbal offer, followed
After the final interview, expect a 1–3 week gap before a verbal offer, followed by a written offer through SuccessFactors's offer letter module (Canada Life) or Workday's offer module (Empower). Background checks for financial services roles include credit history, criminal record, and education verification, and typically run 2–4 weeks before a start date is confirmed.

Resume Tips for Great-West Lifeco

recommended

Use a single-column, standard-fonts resume in Word

Use a single-column, standard-fonts resume in Word .docx or PDF. SuccessFactors and Workday both parse multi-column resumes badly, frequently misordering employment chronology when text runs across columns. Stick to Calibri, Arial, or Times New Roman at 10–12pt for body text and avoid header/footer regions for any content the parser needs to extract.

recommended

Lead with the language of insurance and financial services

Lead with the language of insurance and financial services. Canada Life's recruiters and SuccessFactors's keyword scoring both reward candidates who use industry-standard terminology — life insurance, group benefits, segregated funds, defined contribution, defined benefit, recordkeeping, actuarial valuation, OSFI, IFRS 17, AML, KYC — over generic management vocabulary. If you have done insurance-adjacent work without using the formal labels, retitle for clarity.

recommended

Quantify with the specific metrics insurers care about: assets under administrat

Quantify with the specific metrics insurers care about: assets under administration (AUA), assets under management (AUM), number of plan participants, premium volume, claims processed per quarter, loss ratios, persistency rates, expense ratios, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) for client-facing roles. 'Improved customer experience' is invisible; 'raised plan sponsor NPS from 38 to 51 over four quarters' is fundable.

recommended

For actuarial candidates, list your exam progress in the format the profession r

For actuarial candidates, list your exam progress in the format the profession recognizes. Use the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) credential names and exact exam codes, list the order in which exams were passed and the dates, and include your current credentialing track (ASA, FSA, FCIA, ACAS, FCAS) with target dates if you are mid-credential. Canada Life's actuarial recruiters can read this notation at a glance and treat anything else as ambiguity.

recommended

For Empower Retirement candidates, foreground experience with retirement plan re

For Empower Retirement candidates, foreground experience with retirement plan recordkeeping platforms (Empower's own platform, Voya, Fidelity Workplace Investing, Principal, Vanguard Institutional, T. Rowe Price Retirement Plan Services), ERISA, the SECURE 2.0 Act, plan compliance testing (ADP/ACP, top-heavy, 415 limits), and any experience with payroll integrations such as Workday, ADP, Paycom, or Paylocity.

recommended

For Putnam Investments candidates, structure your buy-side experience the way bu

For Putnam Investments candidates, structure your buy-side experience the way buy-side recruiters expect: portfolio strategy worked on, asset class coverage, AUM, named funds where you contributed and the nature of the contribution, performance attribution methodology (Brinson-Fachler, Brinson-Hood-Beebower), CFA charter or progress, and any compliance certifications. Putnam, like most asset managers, reads sell-side resumes through a buy-side lens, so explicitly translate sell-side accomplishments into investment thesis impact.

recommended

For technology roles supporting CONNECT, the cloud transformation program, name

For technology roles supporting CONNECT, the cloud transformation program, name the cloud platforms (Microsoft Azure is the strategic primary, AWS is significant for Empower's recordkeeping infrastructure), the data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks), and the integration patterns (Apache Kafka, MuleSoft, API gateway architectures). Insurance IT recruiters also screen for experience modernizing mainframe-adjacent systems — if you have COBOL-to-Java or AS/400-to-cloud migration experience, list it explicitly.

recommended

Address the Canadian context if you are applying to Canadian roles

Address the Canadian context if you are applying to Canadian roles. List Canadian-equivalent credentials where relevant (Chartered Insurance Professional via the Insurance Institute of Canada, Life License Qualification Program for licensed sales roles, Canadian Securities Course for wealth-adjacent positions). If your degree is foreign, indicate Canadian credential equivalency through World Education Services where you have it.

recommended

Show longevity, not just velocity

Show longevity, not just velocity. Great-West Lifeco's median employee tenure is among the highest in Canadian financial services — multi-decade tenures are common in actuarial, claims, and group benefits. Hiring managers screen for candidates who plausibly stay three-plus years, and a resume showing six employers in five years requires explanation in the cover letter, not silence.

recommended

Use a brief professional summary at the top — three to four lines, not a paragra

Use a brief professional summary at the top — three to four lines, not a paragraph. State your discipline (actuary, underwriter, claims adjudicator, software engineer, portfolio analyst), years of relevant experience, the scale of the work (premium volume, AUM, plan participants, codebase size), and your authorization to work in the relevant geography. Drop any aspirational framing.

recommended

Save the file with a parser-friendly filename: FirstName_LastName_RoleTitle_2026

Save the file with a parser-friendly filename: FirstName_LastName_RoleTitle_2026.docx. Avoid spaces, special characters, and version numbers like '_v3_FINAL' that get into screening reports and look unfinished.

recommended

Submit in Word

Submit in Word .docx format unless the posting specifically requires PDF. SuccessFactors's Word parser is materially more reliable than its PDF parser, particularly with date-range extraction. The exception is creative or design-adjacent roles where layout fidelity matters — those should go as PDF.

ATS System: SAP SuccessFactors (Canada Life and Great-West Lifeco corporate); Workday (Empower Retirement); Franklin Templeton legacy ATS (Putnam, transitional)

Canada Life and Great-West Lifeco's corporate Canadian and Irish operations run on SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting under the company instance 'thegreatweP2', hosted on the EU SuccessFactors data centre (career5.successfactors.eu, performancemanager5.successfactors.eu). The candidate-facing search portal is jobs.canadalife.com and the applicant authentication and profile management surface is the SuccessFactors-hosted candidate dashboard. Empower Retirement in the United States runs on Workday Recruiting with the tenant slug 'empower' on Workday's WD12 pod (empower.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com/empower). Putnam Investments, acquired from Franklin Templeton in January 2024, currently routes career applications to franklintempletoncareers.com while ATS migration to a Great-West Lifeco-controlled system proceeds. SuccessFactors and Workday parse resumes very differently — SuccessFactors's parser is more sensitive to section headings and date formats, while Workday is more sensitive to file format and column layout — so candidates applying across subsidiaries should expect to verify auto-fill output separately for each system.

For SuccessFactors (Canada Life), submit Word .docx with single-column layout, standard headings (Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications), and ISO-style dates (MMM YYYY — MMM YYYY or MMM YYYY — Present). Avoid graphical headers, text boxes, and tables for content the parser needs.
Reuse your SuccessFactors profile across Canada Life roles. The 'thegreatweP2' instance covers Great-West Lifeco corporate, Canada Life, and the Canadian arm of the holding company — your profile and prior applications are visible to recruiters across the group.
For Workday (Empower), upload your resume to auto-populate, then carefully review every parsed field, particularly employment date ranges and degree fields. Workday's parser commonly truncates compound job titles ('Senior Software Engineer II, Platform Reliability') and silently drops content that does not match its expected schema.
Use complete LinkedIn-quality job descriptions in your application's experience entries even after uploading a resume. Both ATSes index the application form text more aggressively than the attached resume for keyword matching, and minimal entries hurt your match score.
For bilingual Canada Life roles, indicate French proficiency level in the dedicated language fields, not only in the resume body. SuccessFactors uses structured language fields for filtering bilingual candidate pools.
Set up email alerts in SuccessFactors and Workday for the specific job families you target. Both systems send notifications faster than LinkedIn's job alerts, particularly for internal-priority requisitions that go live without paid promotion.
Avoid creating duplicate SuccessFactors accounts. If you have applied to Canada Life or Great-West Lifeco previously, reuse your existing account — duplicates are detected at recruiter triage and resolved by deleting the newer profile, which can lose your most recent application history.

Interview Culture

Interviewing at Great-West Lifeco group companies is a structured, multi-stage process that strongly favours the prepared, the specific, and the unhurried.

Across the group the modal process is three to four rounds: a recruiter screen of 30 minutes, a hiring manager interview of 45–60 minutes, a panel or technical interview of 60–90 minutes, and frequently a final interview with a director or vice-president. For senior roles a fifth round with a divisional executive is normal. Canada Life's interview culture is recognizably Canadian financial services: behavioural questions framed in the STAR format dominate, interviewers take detailed notes, and candidate responses are scored against pre-defined competency rubrics that are calibrated across panels. Expect questions that probe regulatory awareness ('walk me through how you would explain MGA oversight to a junior analyst'), client orientation ('describe a time you delivered difficult news to a plan sponsor'), and scale of judgment ('what is the largest claim or transaction you have personally signed off on, and how did you decide?'). Technical interviews for actuarial, underwriting, and quantitative roles are rigorous: case studies on pricing, reserving, mortality, and morbidity are common, and SOA/CIA exam content is fair game. For technology roles supporting the CONNECT transformation, expect system design questions grounded in real Great-West Lifeco architecture concerns — handling personally identifiable information across cloud regions, integrating with mainframe-era policy administration systems, and meeting OSFI and provincial insurance regulator expectations on data residency. Empower's interview culture is similar in structure but somewhat faster in cadence and more sales-and-product-aware, reflecting its US recordkeeping market position. Behavioural questions at Empower tilt toward growth and influence ('describe how you grew a book of plan sponsor relationships'), and product interviews probe SECURE 2.0 Act fluency, fee compression dynamics, and the participant experience layer. Putnam's interview style, where it can be observed during the post-acquisition transition, is closer to traditional Boston buy-side asset management — fewer rounds, more concentrated firepower, deep investment process discussions, and a clear expectation that candidates bring a developed view on markets and on how Putnam's specific funds and strategies fit into a portfolio. Across all subsidiaries, the cultural undercurrent is the long view: interviewers ask candidates where they see themselves in five and ten years and they take the answer seriously. Candidates who frame Great-West Lifeco as a stepping stone are screened out. Compensation conversations happen late and are professional rather than negotiated aggressively — Great-West Lifeco group companies tend to bring strong offers on the first pass, with measured movement on negotiation, particularly on base salary. Total compensation includes pension benefits that are unusually generous by current market standards (Canada Life maintains traditional defined benefit pension components for many roles), defined contribution matching, employee share purchase plans, and comprehensive group benefits — these matter to total comp and should be valued explicitly when comparing offers. Decisions arrive on a measured timeline: a one-to-three-week gap between final interview and offer is the norm, not a signal of declining interest. Pushing aggressively for faster decisions reads as a misunderstanding of the institution.

What Great-West Lifeco Looks For

Demonstrated longevity at prior employers and a credible reason for any short tenures. Great-West Lifeco companies hire for retention, not for sprints, and a resume of three-plus year tenures with clear progression is read as a strong positive signal.
Domain knowledge in life insurance, group benefits, retirement plans, or asset management — and the vocabulary that goes with it. Adjacent industry experience (banking, P&C insurance, wealth management) is welcome, but candidates who cannot speak the language of the specific subsidiary they are applying to are filtered out at the panel stage.
Regulatory and compliance literacy. OSFI, IFRS 17, the Canadian Insurance Companies Act, and provincial insurance regulator frameworks (FSRA in Ontario, AMF in Quebec) for Canada Life roles; ERISA, SECURE 2.0, and SEC investment advisor frameworks for Empower and Putnam. Even technical roles are expected to know which regulator their work answers to.
Bilingual capacity (English and French) for many Canada Life roles, particularly customer-facing positions, Quebec operations, and federally regulated functions. CEFR B2 or higher is expected for roles flagged bilingual.
Comfort operating inside a controlled-shareholder, conservatively run institution where decisions are deliberate, hierarchies are real, and the dominant cultural reference points are insurance regulation, fiduciary duty, and the long-term priorities of the controlling shareholder.
Quantitative discipline backed by credentials. Actuarial roles require visible exam progress on the SOA or CIA tracks. Investment roles favour CFA charter-holders or candidates in late stages. Risk and analytics roles welcome FRM, PRM, or graduate degrees in statistics, mathematics, or computational finance.
Cloud, data, and integration skills for the CONNECT transformation. Microsoft Azure is the strategic primary platform, AWS is significant in Empower's recordkeeping stack, and modern data tooling (Snowflake, Databricks, Apache Kafka, MuleSoft) is broadly relevant.
Genuine interest in financial services as a career, not as a temporary stop. Interviewers ask explicit questions about long-term career direction and weight the answers heavily.
Strong written communication. Insurance and asset management generate enormous volumes of internal documentation, regulatory filings, and client correspondence, and weak writing surfaces quickly. Cover letters are read closely.
Cultural fit with each specific subsidiary. Canada Life is Canadian financial services polite; Empower is US retirement plan competitive; Putnam is Boston buy-side traditional; Irish Life is European life-and-pensions disciplined. Demonstrating that you understand which culture you are entering is itself a hiring signal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Great-West Lifeco the same company as Canada Life?

No. Great-West Lifeco Inc. is the publicly traded holding company (TSX: GWO), headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Canada Life is its largest operating subsidiary, providing life and health insurance, group benefits, and wealth management to Canadians. Other major subsidiaries include Empower Retirement in the US, Putnam Investments in Boston, Irish Life in the Republic of Ireland, and Canada Life UK in Britain. When you apply for a job, you are applying to a specific subsidiary, not to the holding company.

Who controls Great-West Lifeco?

Power Corporation of Canada, a Montreal-based holding company controlled by the Desmarais family, owns roughly 71% of Great-West Lifeco's outstanding voting shares. This is publicly disclosed and shapes the company's long planning horizons, conservative operating tempo, and unusually long executive tenures. Paul Mahon has been President and CEO of Great-West Lifeco since 2013.

Which ATS does Great-West Lifeco use?

It depends on the subsidiary. Canada Life and the Great-West Lifeco corporate functions in Canada and Ireland use SAP SuccessFactors under the company instance 'thegreatweP2' (career5.successfactors.eu). Empower Retirement in the United States uses Workday Recruiting (empower.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com/empower). Putnam Investments, acquired from Franklin Templeton in January 2024, still routes careers traffic to franklintempletoncareers.com during ATS migration. Each ATS requires a separate profile.

Where is Great-West Lifeco headquartered?

Great-West Lifeco's head office is at 100 Osborne Street North in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Major employment hubs across the group include Winnipeg, Toronto, Mississauga, Montreal, London (Ontario), and Regina for Canada Life; Greenwood Village, Colorado for Empower Retirement; Boston, Massachusetts for Putnam Investments; Dublin for Irish Life; and London, UK for Canada Life UK.

How long does the hiring process take at Canada Life or Great-West Lifeco?

Plan for six to twelve weeks from application to offer for non-urgent roles, longer for senior or specialized positions. A typical timeline is three to five weeks from application to first interview, two to three weeks of structured interview rounds, and one to three weeks between final interview and verbal offer, followed by two to four weeks of background checks before a confirmed start date. Empower in the US tends to move somewhat faster than Canada Life in Canada.

Is bilingual French required at Canada Life?

It depends on the role. Customer-facing positions serving Quebec, federally regulated functions, and roles based in Montreal frequently require working bilingual French and English at CEFR B2 or higher. Many corporate roles in Winnipeg, Toronto, and London (Ontario) are English-only. Bilingual roles are flagged in the posting and tested during screening using standard verbal language assessments.

Does Great-West Lifeco sponsor work permits?

Selectively. Canada Life sponsors Canadian work permits for hard-to-fill actuarial, IT architecture, quantitative, and senior leadership roles, but it does not sponsor for the bulk of customer service, claims administration, or operations openings. Empower sponsors US work authorization more selectively still — primarily for senior technical and quantitative roles. State your authorization status explicitly in your cover letter to prevent screening delays.

What is the CONNECT transformation, and is it hiring?

CONNECT is Great-West Lifeco's multi-year cloud and platform modernization program, migrating core insurance and recordkeeping systems to Microsoft Azure (the strategic primary) and AWS, with modern data tooling on Snowflake and Databricks and integration via Kafka and MuleSoft. It is a significant ongoing source of technology hiring across Canada Life and Empower — cloud architects, platform engineers, data engineers, and integration specialists are actively recruited. The work itself sits inside a regulated, audited, change-managed environment with insurance compliance constraints.

How are interviews structured for actuarial roles?

Actuarial interviews at Canada Life typically run four rounds: a recruiter screen, a hiring manager behavioural interview, a technical case interview covering pricing, reserving, mortality, or morbidity depending on the team, and a final interview with a director or appointed actuary. SOA and CIA exam content is fair game in the technical round. List your exam track, exams passed, dates, and credentialing target (ASA, FSA, FCIA) precisely on your resume — actuarial recruiters read this notation at a glance.

What is compensation like at Great-West Lifeco group companies?

Total compensation tilts toward long-term and benefits-heavy packages by current market standards. Base salaries are competitive within Canadian financial services, US retirement, and Boston asset management benchmarks but are not market-leading. The package strength is in pension benefits (Canada Life maintains traditional defined benefit components for many roles), defined contribution matching, employee share purchase plans, and comprehensive group benefits. Negotiation is professional rather than aggressive — first offers tend to be strong, with measured movement on base.

Open Positions

Great-West Lifeco currently has 68 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 68 open positions at Great-West Lifeco

How to Apply to Great-West Lifeco

Key Takeaways

About Great-West Lifeco

Application Process

Resume Tips for Great-West Lifeco

Use a single-column, standard-fonts resume in Word

Lead with the language of insurance and financial services

Quantify with the specific metrics insurers care about: assets under administrat

For actuarial candidates, list your exam progress in the format the profession r

For Empower Retirement candidates, foreground experience with retirement plan re

For Putnam Investments candidates, structure your buy-side experience the way bu

For technology roles supporting CONNECT, the cloud transformation program, name

Address the Canadian context if you are applying to Canadian roles

Show longevity, not just velocity

Use a brief professional summary at the top — three to four lines, not a paragra

Save the file with a parser-friendly filename: FirstName_LastName_RoleTitle_2026

Submit in Word

ATS System: SAP SuccessFactors (Canada Life and Great-West Lifeco corporate); Workday (Empower Retirement); Franklin Templeton legacy ATS (Putnam, transitional)

Interview Culture

What Great-West Lifeco Looks For

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources