“Our industry needs to do a better job of attracting talent” | Insurance business America
“Some people are doing the job in threes, and I don’t know if the airlines have a plan to address the problem.”
Insurance News
By Ryan Smith
The insurance industry needs to attract its talent, according to a manager at Risk Placement Services.
“Everyone seems to be in the same boat right now when it comes to finding top talent,” Mike Mueller (pictured), area senior vice president at RPS, told IBA. “But many of the airlines have cut back on their training programs over the last decade, maybe even more than 10 years. Brokerage firms – especially agencies – are looking for talent from other competitors. As a result, there is no real training program or standard for many of these companies.”
“Staffing is one of those things where if you talk to a lot of people on the carrier side, everyone is understaffed,” he said. “Some people do the work with three people. And I don’t know if the carriers have a plan to address the problem or if the idea is, hey, we’ll have one person do the jobs of three people until they raise their hand and say enough is enough.”
The skills shortage will become an even bigger problem as older insurance professionals leave the industry, he said.
“The boomers retiring in the next decade – they are leaving behind vacancies, opportunities and books of business,” he said. “Our industry simply needs to do a better job of attracting talent to the industry – and then of course training that top talent once they get here, because there will be a significant amount of vacancies over the next decade.”
Need for quality education
According to Mueller, solving the workforce problem is not just about bringing in fresh staff, but also about ensuring that young people receive quality training once they enter the industry. However, he said high-quality training programs are not currently the industry standard.
“CNA and AIG, some of the more well-known airlines that you recognize by their name and brand – they had training programs where a student would graduate and they would hire them. And for two or three years they go through a training program,” he said. “Gallagher has a really good training program … but if you look around, there’s not a lot of that happening in the industry.”
Selling the industry
Many industry veterans began working in this field almost by accident, without any real intention of pursuing a career in insurance. This suggests that the insurance industry needs to better inform its prospects about the diverse and dynamic career opportunities in the industry, Mueller said.
“I think most people who find themselves in this industry either have something to do with their family or they just fall into it backwards,” he said. “They ended up taking a job and realizing that it was good money for work that wasn’t nearly as technical as, you know, investment banking. And it’s a really good opportunity for a stable career and the benefits are very, very good.”
“I think a lot of students, especially, just know what they know from TV. So, you know, the Liberty Mutual and Progressive and Allstate commercials,” he said. “So maybe they just have one perspective on what insurance is, and that’s obviously a personal perspective. You may be completely unaware of how much surplus and excess there is, or how creative wholesaling can be. … I feel like most students don’t realize how dynamic this industry is. As an industry, we need to do a better job of recruiting at the graduate level and opening people’s eyes to the fact that there is more out there than just accounting and finance.”
“A people industry”
As new technologies like generative AI change the face of the industry, many young people may think twice about taking a job that could be done by a computer program a few years later. But Mueller believes the fear is largely unfounded.
“I have been working in the industry for 20 years. It was always talked about – automation, the sodas and the other products that came out where they were supposed to automate the industry,” he said. “I have seen them open and I have seen them close – and in some cases even close within two years. Because it’s still a staffing industry where we have to explain everything to customers, make multiple phone calls to understand coverages, explore options and so on.”
And no matter how much evolving technology changes the world, one thing will remain the same: people will always need insurance.
“One of the first pieces of information I got when I first got into the insurance industry was that it was a recession-proof industry,” Mueller said. “Insurance is necessary to drive the global economy forward. And for me, I viewed that as stability. … Their production is not necessarily tied to the economy and the challenges it presents. I think that’s one of the things that we as an industry definitely need to emphasize to young people to get them interested – preaching the stability and then the dynamism with which risks are constantly evolving. And then we just remind them that this is a people-first company and that there are always opportunities to advance their careers.”
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2024-04-01 15:01:03
www.insurancebusinessmag.com
