Gen Z employees are less interested in traditional office jobs. (Credit: BreizhAtao/Adobe Stock)
The insurance industry is facing an active talent shortage—and will need to get creative to solve it, according to panelists at Send’s Insurance Talent Crisis webinar.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the industry will have lost 400,000 employees to retirement by 2026, which is just six months from now. At the same time, the industry is having trouble filling those roles with young professionals.
“That’s not a crisis that’s looming,” said Tony Tarquini, the webinar’s host. “That’s one that’s here today.”
It’s not just the United States that’s impacted either. The talent shortage is being felt globally. Panelist Suzanne Bray, head of talent & growth at Convex, said over half of underwriters in the U.K. are over the age of 40 right now.
COVID-19 played a role in exacerbating the shortage, Bray said. When companies were disrupted by the pandemic, some older insurance professionals took it as an opportunity to retire earlier than planned or change careers. And many intern and recruitment programs at schools were paused while students were remote.
With older employees gone and younger replacements yet to enter, Bray said the industry is at risk of losing the “generational handshake,” the important knowledge transfer that occurs between veterans in the workforce and new recruits.
What’s the solution? Attracting young professionals might require a bit of a rebrand, said Rose Hall, founder and CEO of RH Business Ventures. Insurance companies should work to emphasize the fun, creative, problem solving parts of the job when speaking with recruits, she said.
“Talent shortage is a problem in every industry but especially in an industry where it’s not one of the natural professions that people think about when they’re younger,” she said. “They’re not in middle school and high school going, “I want to be an insurance professional!” So I think it’s incumbent upon us to bring sexy back to the insurance industry.”
Flexibility is also key. Younger generations are less excited about working from an office, Monday through Friday, Bray said, and employers will have to look at ways to accommodate that. “They really want flexibility around where they work, how they work,” she said. “They’re not so attracted to the traditional ways of working.”
That’s partly because they’re using technology, particularly AI, to get more done, faster, Hall said. “Gen Z is growing up with AI,” she said. “What I’m seeing in Gen Zers is this hunger to do more because they know they can be more efficient with these technologies, while the rest of us are just learning it.”
Hall said some of her more senior friends in the industry have slowed their retirement plans, which could help ease an imminent workforce crisis. It would also give younger generations more time to absorb senior employees’ leadership and customer service skills — possibly in exchange for some tech tutorials.
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