Jody Lohr, President of Professional Young Insurance Brokers, an Alberta association that by its self-description was ‘created for young brokers by young brokers’ by members of the Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta (IBAA), puts the absence of younger people entering the industry down to a case of “if you don’t know about it, you don’t think about it.”
“The awareness, the general concept of the industry -- it’s unknown. Before I got into the industry I barely even knew why I paid for insurance!”
Of the younger brokers she knows personally, Lohr says “Everybody usually ends up in the industry from either following a family line or by a fluke of getting into the industry. I’m a fluke. Even with the people on the young broker’s board pretty much you can draw a line down by who comes into it from a family line of previous insurance brokers and broker owners, versus people who have fallen into it.”
And it seems like there’s not enough falling going on among the younger cohort; certainly not enough to counter the wave of retirements expected in the mid-term future.
“There’s not an awareness of going to post-secondary school and becoming an insurance broker. Nobody says ‘when I grow up I want to be an insurance broker’. It’s not even a thought. It’s not even discussed or known about. Everyone wants to grow up to be a doctor; everyone wants to grow up to be a dentist; that’s what’s talked about.”
When it comes to the insurance industry’s image, it seems that less is just less.
“It’s not so much [that the industry has] an image *problem*; just there’s no image. It’s not like there’s a bad name out there, people just forget that that’s a job. It’s a lack of knowledge.”
And that fact is especially unfortunate for a line of work that not only cries out for a new generation to join it, but also boasts a low barrier to entry.
“It’s probably one of the simplest careers to get into -- it’s simply a week-long course and writing an exam. There’s no other career with the financial stability out there that I know of that you can go to school for 5 days and be licensed.”
Lohr and the PYIB are certainly doing their part to get the word out via a program of high school classroom visits over the last five years that has met with uniformly positive results. This program differs from others that involved speaking at trade shows and career fairs (“at that point they’ve almost picked their plan” Lohr says) as it intercepts young people when they are in the phase of picking out what career they wish to pursue.
The program, Lohr says, has produced “Nothing but positive feedback. The students are very involved in it. They’re definitely a lot smarter in high school than I was.”
“The knowledge base is out there. We now have people on the board who have a re-occurring appointment with teachers where they’re going back every year; giving a presentation every year.”
