At a time when new capacity is coming into the inland marinemarket, professionals in the sector are wondering if there areenough talented underwriters to go around.

Some complain that the insurance industry in general has notinvested much time or money into training new talent for around 10years, and the problems that are arising because of this are beingfelt particularly hard in specialty lines like inland marine.

With the lack of trained professionals, new entrants in themarket have been either using in-house underwriters with little orno experience in inland marine, or hiring away talent from othercompanies--who might then be poached by another insurer in aprofessional shuffle that Ron Thornton, president of the InlandMarine Underwriters Association, called "musical chairs."

Explaining that the war for talent extends industrywide, SophiaPhillips, vice president of the marine division at HanoverInsurance Group, said that "what's happened is companies,especially in the last soft market, started cutting out a lot oftraining...So the industry hasn't trained in a long time, and whenyou start cutting out training, what suffers the most is thespecialty lines."

During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, companies wereconsolidating rapidly, noted Ms. Phillips, and in an attempt to getmore value for their labor dollars, they shifted inland marineunderwriting responsibilities to their multiline underwriters.

As this trend increased, it caused some fear among inland marineunderwriters, who were concerned their jobs might become obsolete.Some left to work in other lines, and no new talent was trained,according to Ms. Phillips.

Compounding the problem, she said, is that with all of themergers and acquisitions in the last 10 years, approximately adozen markets that had credible marine departments were acquired."So all of a sudden, you don't have so many major competitors," Ms.Phillips noted. "You have a few that have a lot and a bunch thatjust dabble."

Now, she said, in this soft market, there are companies thatwant to grow in inland marine, but not a lot of trainedprofessionals to help them do it. "So there's also a lot of na?vecapacity out there--maybe folks who really haven't been through asoft market like this before, who may not understand the dynamicsof a soft market."

And it is not necessarily the new entrants that make up such"na?ve capacity." Rich Soja, global manager of Chubb MarineUnderwriters, said that with the new capacity hiring away seasonedunderwriters, the existing companies from which they came areforced to backfill.

"So if you look at it more in terms of new underwriters--humanbeings--as opposed to new underwriting companies," Mr. Soja said,"we have a lot more underwriters in the mix now without reallybringing new talent into the industry en masse in the past 10years, and you start to question: Are the training programs inplace to make sure they know what they're doing? Are theyadequately equipped to be able to make smart decisions?"

While companies by necessity are beginning to train again, Mr.Thornton sees an opportunity for IMUA to assist in this area. Oneof his goals, he said, is to help prepare generation X and Yworkers for the inland marine sector.

"They're looking for information, and they're looking fortraining," Mr. Thornton said. "Our goal, and what we've beenworking on as an association since I've been here, is we want to bethe education provider--the information provider to employees ofmember companies. And I think that's the key thing that we canprovide."

Help Wanted Art--read like a newspaper ad: