The insurance industry is experiencing skills deficit

Magazine Issue:

Magazine date:

Jul 2018

Recent surveys are forecasting 20% to 50% active labor force reduction in insurance companies for the near future. Due to growing mobility, it will no longer be possible for an individual to maintain a wage earner status for a lifetime within the same insurance company.

This trend is all the more worrying with the insurance sector already sustaining skill deficit. Developing countries will be the hardest hit by these mutations.

Surveys have found that in the developed insurance markets, approximately just one third of the players believe they are surrounded by staff who are competent enough to meet their needs.

Insurers’ skill deficit is made even worse by the emergence or consolidation of:

regulatory requirements: tight reporting to supervisory authorities,
in-house requirements: internal audit, tighter guidelines,
digitization, digitalization, big data [4], cloud,...
mobile internet : mobile aids, tablets,...
mobile or on-board measurement gear: sensors placed in items or on human beings, driverless cars [5],...
social networks, interactive applications,...

Staff specialized in these activities is notoriously lacking as the labor market and academic entities are no longer able to meet demand, with brain drain standing as just a stopgap, transferring rather than resolving the problem.