The last few years have seen unprecedented change across many industries, including insurance. The Worldwide Broker Network (WBN), the world’s largest independent broker network, works to stay abreast of those changes for its members across more than 100 countries.
Olga Collins (pictured above), CEO of WBN, recently chatted with IB Talk about the challenges facing brokers around the world. In particular, Collins spoke about the challenges of recruiting and retaining talented insurance professionals.
“I think our issues or problems are not really unique to insurance only, especially over the last few years,” Collins said. “We face similar issues as far as talent retention, as people call [a] ‘war on talent.’ At WBN, we’ve created a leadership-focused program for our rising leaders. We call it Young Professionals Academy, and it’s catered to our members so they can use this tool as a recruitment retention item, for example.”
Collins said that while the insurance space’s knack for talent retention was improving, there was still progress to be made.
“I think the insurance or the risk management world has come a long way when it comes to educating and keeping talent within,” she said. “I think we can still do a better job advocating for … a major or a track for risk management to be a more common [university] class route or a major route, because not many universities in various countries provide that as a learning path.
“So I think we have some more gains to be had – but overall, I think we do a really good job attracting folks. … The insurance world is a people world – it’s all about relationships. There’s a little bit of fun to be had here as well. So we want to make sure we portray that to college graduates accordingly.”
