Donald G. Sword

Donald G. Sword is the Vice President, Legal & Regulatory and Corporate Secretary of Johnson Inc and the Johnson/Unifund group of companies.

Johnson Inc. employs 1200 and is a general, life and accident & sickness brokerage/agency, that operates across Canada. Headquartered in St. John's, NL, with more than 65 branch locations, most of Johnson's business involves providing home and auto insurance programs and group benefits to organizations in the retiree, alumni, education and health care sectors as well as other professional groups and associations.  Johnsons primary underwriter for home and auto insurance is Unifund Assurance Company, a federally chartered property & casualty insurer managed by Johnson under a managing agency agreement. Approximately 90% of Unifund's claims are adjusted in-house by Unifund Claims Inc.  Johnson/Unifund is a separately managed business group within the Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Group (RSA) which is headquartered in the UK and has operations around the world. Mr.Sword has been with Johnson Inc since 1992.

In his current role, Mr. Sword is responsible for all corporate non-claims legal services, corporate secretarial and regulatory compliance. His primary practice areas include corporate, commercial, M&A, IP, and regulatory compliance. He is also a member of the RSA's worldwide Legal Practice Groups for M&A and IP. Mr. Sword is a member of the Johnson/Unifund senior management team overseeing all corporate strategy and business operations and as a result is  involved in a variety of mixed legal-business related management activities and functions within the Johnson organization. He is the organization's Chief Compliance Officer, chairs the Privacy and Fraud Prevention Committees, sits on the Pension committee and has responsibilities related to the Company's Enterprise Risk Management programs.  In addition to two staff lawyers and paralegal staff, Mr. Sword also supervises the licensing and continuing education function for the 500+ Johnson/Unifund Claims staff who hold over 2500 individual insurance representative and adjuster licences for various Canadian jurisdictions, and separate trade styles. Due to scope of the business operations and the highly regulated nature of insurance in Canada, Mr.
Sword's  responsibilities include the management of over 45 separate primary insurer, agency/brokerage, adjusting firm regulator relationships across Canada (market conduct, solvency and auto rate regulators).

Mr Sword is a graduate of Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS with both B.Comm and LL.B. degrees. Following articles in Halifax, Mr. Sword articled and practised in St. John's between 1980-1985 with a predecessor of the current Atlantic Canada law firm Cox & Palmer LLP, where he practised primarily civil litigation, including insurance defence and municipal law litigation.

Between 1985-1992, Mr. Sword was Legal Counsel & Corporate Secretary at Fishery Products International Ltd. in St.  John's.  FPI was at the time, a Newfoundland based vertically integrated deep sea fishing, production and worldwide marketing enterprise. At its peak, FPI had 13,800 employees, 31 primary and secondary fish processing plants, over 75 fishing vessels, operations in Canada, USA, UK and Germany as well as joint ventures and dealings with third parties in throughout Europe and Asia.  While the Canadian and Newfoundland governments were originally equity holders, in
1997 FPI became the first government owned operation in Canada to be privatized by way of an initial public offering. At FPI, Mr. Sword's primary practice areas included corporate and commercial, M&A, securities and admiralty law.

Mr. Sword has over 20 years experience as a Corporate Secretary of public companies or financial institutions requiring formal corporate governance and independent directors and nearly 25 years experience as the Chief Legal Officer of a business organization. He is currently the national director for Newfoundland and Labrador for the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association.

Mr. Sword is a Rotarian and an active volunteer in his home community.  He is married to Pat. His two adult daughters, Kimberley and Heather are attending post secondary education in St. John's and Halifax.