No one will be surprised to read the insurance industry has a significant diversity hurdle. Unlike several of its professional service industry peers, our industry is late to the idea that diversity, in all its forms, makes for good business.

However, the insurance industry faces historical diversity challenges that are stifling much needed innovation. Some of these challenges are systemic and will ease with time, while solutions to others require new thinking for an industry facing a host of hurdles as well as opportunities.

Here are four diversity challenges that are stifling insurance industry innovation:

No. 4: A history of homogeneity

The history of the insurance industry has been one primarily defined by a de facto lack of diversity, though we are seeing that change over time. Other professional service groups such as accounting firms, law firms and the financial sector, among others, long ago saw an organic shift in their campus recruitment talent pools which, by their nature, offer more diverse candidates. Conversely, the insurance industry has traditionally focused on recruitment of experience rather than of promise. What does that mean? By relying on network-based recruitment of those already working who offer some level of experience in the industry, the insurance industry has traditionally skipped the less-experienced but more diverse college student contingent.