The insurance industry is entering a period of sustained pressure.
The risks, of course, are familiar: Geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, catastrophic losses and rising loss costs, and the inevitable impact of artificial intelligence. Yet, the most immediate threat is not external, but internal.
A long-forecasted decline in workers has become reality. Industry estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of workers — roughly 400,000 — will leave the insurance industry workforce in the next decade. The sector peaked at just over 3 million workers in February 2025 and has already begun to contract, shedding 50,000 insurance professionals in the past year, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The decline is not due to economic pressures; the workforce is aging and then retiring. With a median age of 44, about half the workforce is expected to head to the sidelines in the next 15 years. While the industry has an enviable 2.2% median unemployment rate over the past 15 months, the turnover of employees in the insurance industry has climbed to a range of 12% to 15%, from a historical average of less than 9%.AI is not driving the decline, though it could certainly be part of the solution. In the past, the industry has successfully attracted insurance professionals from fields such as education and healthcare. Yet AI is significantly reducing the number of barriers to entry and is bringing newcomers up to speed quickly, while allowing the more experienced producers, brokers and other participants to focus on what they really love to do.
The right person, not the right education
Insurance professionals certainly need training and experience, though there are specific innate qualities which matter more. Curiosity and compassion to care about other people's problems and to learn how to solve them are at the top of my list along with communication skills to ask questions and understand the insured's point of view.
At no point, however, is a potential professional's ability couched in terms of being able to learn a system or to key data into a computer. Those qualities are not the only qualities we need.
For me, a great insurance professional is someone who is fascinated by the "What could happen?" and "What keeps you up at night?" questions that you need to ask your clients in order assess their risk exposures. Today's insurance professionals operate best from the mindset of a business owner who plans for growth and anticipates setbacks. Recognizing the unique facets of an industry segment and being able to perform peer comparisons are crucial attributes of successful insurance professionals while navigating user interfaces across disparate information delivery systems will never make the cut.
On the surface, a teacher or nurse are examples of backgrounds with great potential to transition successfully to insurance. Compassion is a strength. Curiosity is strong. The pursuit of excellence via expertise is a hallmark. And the ability to communicate knowledge to others is a requirement.
AI can augment, lower barriers
From a recruiting standpoint, AI significantly moves the needle on training and experience, and the result is a drastic emphasis on the elements of the insurance professional role which drive personal satisfaction. By reducing the need for manual data entry and simplifying interactions with complex systems, AI can lower the barriers to a rapid start for new hires. Instead of spending months learning to leverage disconnected tools, newcomers powered by AI can more quickly access insights, generate peer benchmarks, and produce client-ready content and materials.
Adopting AI, however, does not replace the need for insurance expertise. I could spend the next half hour showing someone how to create a private-company D&O liability benchmark for next Tuesday's board presentation. Or you prompt an AI agent with: "I need an insurance program benchmark for private company D&O that represents small companies with $15m to $20m in revenue, and I want the data to be presented this way and formatted for a slide that fit into this presentation."
The tricky part, of course, is knowing what you need to gather and interpreting the output once it's produced. AI may assemble the litany of materials; advancing the consultative relationship with your client though is up to you. The industry won't close the talent gap by fighting over the same résumés. The fix lies in hiring for empathy and curiosity and using AI to slash the learning curve so newcomers from other fields can thrive.
Jeff Cohen is Senior Vice President of Industry Relations at Zywave. Opinions expressed here are the author's own.
(Featured image credit: NicoElNino/Shutterstock)
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