The insurance industry, generally, is a candidate-short market, and perhaps even more so in a small island country like New Zealand. Insurance Business sat down with Tyler Wren director and partner Gary Bloxham (pictured) to find out the current state of affairs in NZ insurance recruitment.
“Especially in insurance, the borders have created issues in terms of fresh or new talent and that international skilled talent coming through, and also blocking Kiwis from being able to come into the country,” noted Bloxham, who built a two-decade career in insurance and financial services before foraying into headhunting. “We definitely have seen a drop-off in that space.
“Across the main areas that I recruit directly in, which is insurance and financial services, I think we’re going to see a bit of a brain drain. With the fact there’s going to be a bit of freedom of travel, that brain drain could start happening, going across into the Australian space. And that’s down to many factors like cost of living, the cost to getting into property, and also the opportunities.”
Bloxham added: “Don’t forget, New Zealand is a small country – the businesses are a lot smaller here as well, and the opportunities, from a progression perspective, are a lot less. If you look specifically at the insurance space, a lot of work that the big insurers do is offshore. So, they have very specific, flatter structures in terms of the teams here, and your ability as a candidate to have a variety of opportunities is quite limited in a small market like this.”
Remuneration-wise, the Tyler Wren director said the New Zealand market can only pay salaries at a certain level. According to the headhunter agency’s inaugural risk & compliance salary guide for 2021/22, the top end for an operational risk manager stands at $145,000; governance manager, $140,000; and compliance manager, $125,000.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. One attraction, for instance, is the stability of the New Zealand economy, even during the pandemic.
“We have been pretty guarded in terms of how we’ve been successful in keeping COVID out,” asserted Bloxham. “I think we’ve been successful in keeping our economy buoyant.”
Meanwhile, a recent development in the New Zealand insurance market that will also impact hiring is the entry of new players, particularly in the broking space. Last year, major brokerages Lockton and Howden both announced their expansion into the land of the long white cloud. Additionally, said Bloxham, there’s also been movement within other global insurance broking and risk advisory firms.
“That has definitely increased competition in the market, from a candidate perspective,” he told Insurance Business. “And I think from an offshore talent perspective and in terms of Kiwi returners and the likes of that, we have been attracting some specialist skillsets, especially in the financial lines space, into New Zealand. So, we’ve got some pretty heavy hitters that have come in from the London market, but it has been a slow process.
“But I think that uptick, we’ll probably see more inquiries coming through there once it’s settled in as to who can come across the border. And I think we’ll have constraints through 2022 to 2023 still, in those specialist areas. There’s an imbalance at the moment – people haven’t gone on their OEs (overseas experience) and they haven’t moved around. Once the border restrictions start relaxing, I think we’ll see a fair amount of that.”
The recruitment expert, who’s originally from South Africa, went on to highlight the value of transferable skills – be it across geographies or in-between sectors, such as in the case of lawyers transitioning into regulatory-type functions within insurance companies.
He said: “Generally, Kiwis will leave the country, go away for five to eight years or whatever they do on their overseas experience, and they’ll come back and bring those skills back to New Zealand. And then there are specific spaces that will look at migrant labour coming in from different areas. So, for example, if you want to look at underwriters coming in from specialist areas within the London market – that can be in the business interruption or cyber risk space or anything like that – there are certain skills that are transferable to the New Zealand market.”
“It just depends on what the need is at that time from the skillset perspective,” continued Bloxham. “And it has ebbs and flows. In the broking market, it’s difficult to put somebody into a commercial broking role if you’re looking at them to do new business development when they’re new to the country, because they won’t have a network. So, there are different challenges in that respect, and we’ve had to adapt to purely looking at a local market through this COVID era.
“But to grow and build and bring in that wider global experience within the insurance broking and risk advisory space, you do need to tap into that international market. We’ve got a large contingent of individuals that we’ve been tracking and speaking to for years that are still looking at the opportunities of coming to New Zealand. So, the talent will come, but it’s about making sure that it’s safe and accessible for them to come into the market.”
