With demand for skills expected to increase in the next five years, insurance leaders say that attracting and retaining good staff is one of their highest priorities but the industry is not drawing in enough new talent, according to Zurich Financial Services Australia.
Career professionals or those that have inadvertently found themselves working in insurance say it is a highly rewarding career and there are strong misconceptions about the industry.
Zurich’s CEO of general insurance, Daniel Fogarty, who recently spoke at the 2013 AIMS conference in Hawaii on the talent challenges facing the insurance industry, said the industry is expecting significant employment growth with demand for skills in health and general insurance expected to grow by 15% by 2017.
“We need people now and even more in coming years. With the breadth of roles that insurance offers, there’s a place for many different skills and people in our industry. We want to attract the best people.
“Why don’t we attract more people? We’re able to compete for talent with interesting and challenging work, training and development, career progression opportunities and high portability of skills. We can also offer international mobility assignments considering some of the biggest insurers in the world, including Zurich, are global and operate in a number of different countries,” Fogarty said.
“However, the industry does need to work on its reputation. The reality is not matching the perception and we need to be encouraging more people to talk about their positive experiences with insurance.
“We’re better than our reputation and it’s a shame to see so much cynicism directed towards an industry that’s really there to help.”
To attract more talent, Forgarty said the industry needed to actively promote and talk about the rewards of an insurance career and the value insurance adds to the community.
“If everyone in the insurance profession could each attract a few people to our sector, then we feed our pipeline of talent and would ensure we could meet the future needs of our industry.”
Read what NIBA is doing to promote the industry to the outside world.
