Tackling the talent crisis in insurance

Insur­ers across the world are in the midst of a tal­ent bat­tle as the indus­try con­tin­ues to mod­ernise. Busi­ness­es are launch­ing a range of ini­tia­tives, includ­ing appren­tice­ships and part­ner­ships with schools, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, to help attract and retain tal­ent, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on IT and data ana­lyt­ics. This is in response to cus­tomers’ increas­ing demand for dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions with their insur­ers. 

Dan­ny Harmer, chief peo­ple offi­cer at Avi­va, says: “The chal­lenge for us, and for all organ­i­sa­tions, is iden­ti­fy­ing the prod­ucts cus­tomers want and need, and how we respond to that. 

“It’s about stay­ing con­nect­ed to cus­tomers because at the moment they typ­i­cal­ly only have con­tact with insur­ers when they have to.” 

AXA has invest­ed £800,000 in a data acad­e­my designed to upskill its work­force. The acad­e­my, which spans all divi­sions of insur­ance includ­ing claims, risk, human resources and finance, is cur­rent­ly offer­ing 18-month data ana­lyt­ics train­ing pro­grammes to employ­ees who would like to devel­op their per­for­mance. 

Sim­i­lar­ly, America’s CSAA Insur­ance Group last year invest­ed in a six-month pilot appren­tice­ship pro­gramme with­in its IT depart­ment, which it’s now plan­ning to roll out to oth­er busi­ness areas. The insur­er is also con­sid­er­ing an appren­tice­ship scheme specif­i­cal­ly for vet­er­ans.

Mean­while, Aviva’s data sci­ence prac­tice, Quan­tum, has part­nered with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge to research data sci­ence and iden­ti­fy ways in which data can be used to sup­port the busi­ness.

Nev­er­the­less, Deloitte’s 2021 Insur­ance Out­look sur­vey, pub­lished last Decem­ber, reveals 79 per cent of respon­dents believe the pan­dem­ic exposed short­com­ings in their dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties and trans­for­ma­tion plans. 

The industry’s image remains a major stum­bling block to mod­erni­sa­tion efforts. “Insur­ance has this stig­ma that it’s an old boys’ club and it’s still held back by that,” says William Gal­limore, UK man­ag­ing direc­tor of spe­cial­ist insur­ance recruiter HFG. 

A num­ber of insur­ers have pledged to diver­si­fy their work­force in response. CSAA is com­mit­ted to increas­ing its pro­por­tion of female employ­ees and recruits from diverse racial and eth­ic back­grounds, which Bruce Baum­garten, its tal­ent exec­u­tive, believes will enhance the abil­i­ty of the busi­ness to relate to, and sup­port, its diverse cus­tomer base.  

Baum­garten believes that a will­ing­ness by insur­ers to recruit indi­vid­u­als with­out an insur­ance back­ground will fur­ther help to diver­si­fy the indus­try. “The typ­i­cal insur­ance per­son is a white male and, if you keep say­ing insur­ance is a pre­req­ui­site to a job, you’re going to keep get­ting white male can­di­dates,” he points out. 

UK insur­ers are also work­ing hard to pro­mote diver­si­ty across their busi­ness­es. Avi­va is a case in point after recruit­ing Harmer, for­mer chief peo­ple offi­cer at Metro Bank, and Aman­da Blanc as its first female chief exec­u­tive offi­cer. Harmer says: “It’s impor­tant as an indus­try that we look out­side insur­ance; it’s a healthy thing to do.” 

As well as a diver­si­fied work­force, appli­cants are demand­ing more flex­i­ble work­ing prac­tices, includ­ing more infor­mal office attire and the abil­i­ty to work from home.

This is one thing insur­ers are already deliv­er­ing on, says Gal­limore. “I think the pan­dem­ic has real­ly helped, per­verse­ly. The Lloyd’s of Lon­don under­writ­ing floors were closed in March 2020 for the first time in the insur­ance market’s 334-year his­to­ry. So until then, every day peo­ple had to go into Lloyd’s, they had to work in the City five days a week, nine to five, and they had to wear a tie, which I find bonkers. Insur­ance could nev­er have worked at home, but it’s been forced to and it works; it’s had to work.” 

This has cer­tain­ly been the case for AXA. Lucin­da Charles-Jones, group human resources direc­tor, AXA UK and Ire­land, says that the insur­er has been forced to accel­er­ate its efforts to adopt more of a hybrid way of work­ing.

“For some employ­ees this might mean more flex­i­ble hours, less time in our offices and only mak­ing the trip when there is a real pur­pose for doing so or for eas­i­er access to the tools need­ed to best serve our cus­tomers,” she says. 

But per­haps insur­ers’ biggest chal­lenge is in tack­ling prospec­tive appli­cants’ lack of under­stand­ing about the indus­try. Pro­fes­sor Bren­da P. Wells, direc­tor of the risk man­age­ment and insur­ance pro­gramme at East Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty, explains: “Part of the prob­lem is peo­ple don’t under­stand insur­ance and see what oppor­tu­ni­ties are there and the insur­ance indus­try is not doing a good enough job mar­ket­ing those oppor­tu­ni­ties.” 

Christo­pher Par­sons, pro­fes­sor of insur­ance at Cass Busi­ness School at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, agrees. “Bank­ing and accoun­tan­cy are fair­ly attrac­tive. Kids think of lots of mon­ey and manip­u­lat­ing big sums. When young peo­ple make a career choice or choose a degree, they are very young and their con­tact with insur­ance will be vir­tu­al­ly zero. Insur­ance will just be some­thing their par­ents com­plain about. It’s always a grudge pur­chase,” he says.

In the Unit­ed States, a nation­al pro­gramme called Invest aims to edu­cate high school and col­lege stu­dents about insur­ance, finan­cial ser­vices and risk man­age­ment. A num­ber of insur­ers, includ­ing Avi­va, RSA Insur­ance Group and CSAA, are also work­ing with schools, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties to help stu­dents learn how the insur­ance indus­try works and explore the vari­ety of roles on offer. 

Clare Con­nor, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment con­sul­tant (appren­tice­ships) at RSA, says: “Peo­ple don’t under­stand that you can come and be a cyber­an­a­lyst or go into sports insur­ance.” 

Insur­ers also need to tap into, and show­case, the mean­ing­ful work under­tak­en across the indus­try. As CSAA’s Baum­garten says: “It’s a real­ly noble indus­try of peo­ple who just love to help peo­ple. Our very pur­pose is help­ing our cus­tomers pre­vent, pre­pare for and recov­er from life’s uncer­tain­ties and I think that pur­pose real­ly aligns great with what you hear mil­len­ni­als and Gen­er­a­tion Z are look­ing for in a com­pa­ny.” 

Insur­ers’ mod­erni­sa­tion efforts are clear­ly under­way, but by their own admis­sion there’s plen­ty of work still to do to drag the indus­try into the 21st cen­tu­ry, and attract and devel­op the tal­ent it needs.