The insurance industry is keenly aware of the looming exodus of seasoned professionals who have reached retirement age.

The third Insurance Careers Month in February began with a virtual town hall conference co-hosted by the Insurance Careers Movement (ICM) and A.M. Best.

Industry luminaries such as Brian Duperreault, CEO of AIG, Inga Beale, CEO of Lloyd's, Matt Mosher, EVP of A.M. Best, Pina Albo, CEO of Hamilton Insurance Group, and many others, shared their views on how the industry must evolve to attract a new generation of talent.

The need for new expertise, simply from a human capital perspective, is daunting for insurance. The industry is keenly aware of the looming exodus of seasoned insurance professionals who have reached retirement age, creating a flood of positions that must be filled.

But the need to attract younger talent is about much more than hiring for headcount; it's about acquiring new thinking and technical skills that will usher in a new technologically-savvy, innovative, and efficient era across insurance.

Industry-wide opportunity has, until this point, largely fallen on deaf ears regarding the younger workforce. During the town hall, there were many opinions on how to frame the insurance industry more effectively to attract the highly sought after new generation of professionals to solve the talent gap issue.

Diversity and inclusion

Many of the presenters during the virtual town hall discussed the need to promote more diversity in their workforce, and create a more inclusive work culture that invites ideas from every individual, not just C-level or mid-level employees.

The diversity aspect is important from both a work culture and customer standpoint. It fosters more creativity and also helps companies better identify with their customers, who are also increasingly more diverse.

On the topic of workforce diversity, Dan Glaser, CEO of Marsh & McLennan, identified this dynamic as building a company culture based on circles instead of hierarchy. As more than a few panelists pointed out, diversity isn't just about ethnicity, religion or race. It is also about different opinions that are shared across generations, experiences and upbringing.

For some of the speakers, the lack of diversity in insurance is the main catalyst to the younger generation's misperception that insurance is a boring, stagnant industry. The same millennials the industry is trying to attract relish the creative problem solving and free-thinking collaboration associated with a diverse workforce.

Inclusion and diversity aren't one-sided endeavors. By allowing new employees and veteran insurance executives to speak more freely, each group is able to exchange knowledge of different skill sets. It is true, for instance, that veteran insurance professionals must learn how to adopt data-driven decision making, but newcomers must also learn the complexity of the insurance space.

Brian Duperreault, CEO of AIG, spoke passionately about how insurance touches every industry. He highlighted how working in insurance requires smarts that include being good with numbers, social prowess, technical skills, and inquisitiveness, and is one of the few industries that provides and encourages exploration to all different kinds of lines and job roles in the career.

New industry, new skill sets

The insurance industry is in the middle of a transition that will see new companies enter the space, such as Lemonade, and existing companies revamp the way they handle everything from the customer experience to risk.

This shift requires a new arsenal of skill sets that includes data analysis, predictive modeling, data science, software development, coding, research, AI and more. It is important that the younger generation of “digital natives” is involved in ushering insurance into these new areas and developing the next iterations of insurance products.

Related: InsurTech to 2020 and beyond

Occurring in tandem with new products is an additional set of risk indicators that could provide more actionable insights than those currently in use.

New technologies such as drones, sensors, social media, and others will need to be integrated with predictive models used today. These data sources, based largely on information that a younger generation is comfortable with, will create a distinct advantage for the insurers who incorporate employees native to the technologies.

In other words, the story of insurance is not one of moderation and stagnancy, but rather of an industry in a transformative state where newcomers can help mold the future right at this moment.

Greg Jacobson of the Jacobson Group took it a step further, expressing his viewpoint that Artificial Intelligence entering the industry may remove certain jobs, but will create many more new opportunities in the process. This isn't just true of insurance, but of business in general. According to Gartner, 1.8 million jobs will be taken by AI, but the emerging field will create 2.3 million by 2020.

Related: Does working in insurance pay?

Communicating the inherent philanthropy of insurance

Another commonly referenced subject of the town hall was a concerning misconception of what insurance does for people and businesses.

The general public hears far more stories of insurers balking at claims, for instance, than how businesses could not operate without the proper coverage. Insurance allows people and businesses of all kinds to pursue their dreams, and live their daily lives, without fear of an accident breaking the bank. Inga Beale perhaps said it best; insurance “enables human progress.” This is true of employment opportunities and philanthropic endeavors alike.

According to a study conducted by Morning Consult and Fortune Magazine, nearly two-thirds of people between the ages of 18 and 34 were at least somewhat more likely to want to work for a company that gave to charity than one did that not. From initiatives like Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF), to the time and money that insurers donate, the industry must better communicate its charitable endeavors to attract millennials.

The Insurance Careers Movement began as a grassroots campaign that has flourished into an organized global initiative 850 companies strong. Its supporters come from a variety of different sectors of insurance, unifying under a series of messages that improve industry storytelling and drive interest. As a founding member, Valen could not be prouder of what the organization has become.

The opinions expressed here are the author's own.

Kirstin Marr is the Chief Marketing Officer for Valen Analytics. She's also leading the Insurance Careers Movement coalition. To reach this contributor, send email to Kirstin.Marr@valen.com.

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