Brent Lehmann (pictured) is a full-time broker for WTW but in his spare time he’s a career adviser. The WTW general manager of Commercial and Affinity also helps AFL footballers and other sporting professionals transition to successful post-playing day careers. Lehman’s ImproveMe venture is now attracting interest from the insurance industry and could provide a key to solving the industry’s education and talent deficits.
“It’s an issue that I’ve been passionate about for a period of time,” said Lehmann, who founded ImproveMe in 2015.
The broker said creating a talent pool at the ground level of the industry is vital.
However, “first and foremost,” he said, the industry needs to be much more visible as an exciting career pathway for younger people.
“Whether that starts at high school level or whether it starts at university level, the insurance industry doesn’t have a really active presence showcasing the rewarding nature of a career in insurance,” he said.
The old cliché still applies: many people fall into a career in insurance rather than consciously choosing it.
“So I think we’ve got to start with the positivity of the industry and what it can deliver from a rewarding career perspective,” said Lehman.
Another side of the talent and education issue is cultivating the right skills.
“There’s a lot of young talent out there that might be very strong creatively or they might be very strong analytically,” said Lehman.
The broker said the insurance industry can provide a great career for both ends of the young talent spectrum.
“I think we need to start pulling apart and understanding the core strengths that we look for and the skill bases that we look for in people to fill roles in the industry and actually start to encourage people to learn more about those fundamental strengths and skills that they’ve got and where they can apply in insurance,” he said.
Lehmann said this will start to create a talent pool at the ground level.
“If we start to create a talent pool then we’ve got the existing talent within the industry as a whole that can start to look towards those more formal education and training pathways,” he said.
“But we’ve got to get them in there in the first place and want them to be in there too,” he said.
And to get them there in the first place, he said, there needs to be more educational pathways that lead to the insurance industry
“It might be a little bit controversial what I say here,” said Lehmann. “I think ANZIIF and NIBA, as good as they are as organizations and they’re very, very strong in supporting growth and development from within the industry. But that’s once you are in the industry.”
However, the problem, he said, is attracting new talent who aren’t yet in the industry’s fold.
“I still don’t think anywhere near enough work is being done to attract new participants into the industry,” said Lehmann.
He said the challenge turning this around is the job of the entire insurance industry, not just ANZIIF and NIBA.
Some progress is being made. The Australian College of Insurance Studies (ACIS) is one of only a handful of educational institutions offering insurance industry training courses. The not-for-profit organisation provides standardised graduate and undergraduate courses in insurance law and practice. They launched their programs last year in partnership with the University of Queensland and the University of Western Australia.
Read more: ACIS head responds to “knowledge gap” report
Lehmann would like the entire insurance industry to do more.
“This is firmly planted on the entire industry as a whole: How can we become a lot more visible and become not just a viable career pathway but a very rewarding and fulfilling career pathway?” he asked.
Does the banking industry with its many formal education options, including through university, provide a possible model for the insurance industry to follow?
“I absolutely agree with that,” said Lehmann.
“Most young people coming through the education system will know exactly about banking careers and where that might take them. Even the professional consulting firms do it incredibly well and they position themselves where if you end up in that line of business that’s one of the most prestigious roles that you can get straight out of university,” he explained.
Lehmann’s ImproveMe venture could help solve some of these issues.
“The improveMe venture has its origins very steeped in professional sport. The problem that was being solved at the time was helping athletes prepare for the ultimate transition away from sport and into a fulfilling career beyond the game itself while at the same time allowing them to become better athletes too,” he said.
Recently, said Lehmann, ImproveMe made its debut as a tool for the insurance industry.
“We’ve started recently doing work with some participants in the insurance industry to help them understand the emerging skills that are going to be required for insurance professionals moving forward and how we can take on the role of upskilling and reskilling existing personnel to continue their own personal and professional development,” he said.
One big cause of the current talent gap across the insurance industry, he said, was the offshoring of administrative support services by big insurers and brokerages about a decade ago.
“I don’t think we fully appreciated or understood the unintended consequences of what was done,” he said.
“The unintended consequence of that is we’ve lost those roles where we were bringing junior people into our industry to teach them about our clients about our service and about how we operate at the ground level to then allow them to grow above and beyond that,” he said.
