What the industry should do to get more P&C recruits

As the P&C workforce ages out of the industry and recruits leave for prospects in other sectors, the industry must better highlight the benefits that come with an insurance career. 

What exactly are those benefits? Compensation, professional development through financial assistance, flexible work schedules and employee well-being and health, speakers at the RIMS Canada Conference shared. 

The industry is losing its talent to the banking and consulting sectors, the two most popular external destinations for P&C talent at 14% and 11% respectively, according to the Insurance Institute of Canada’s Demographic Report 2022-2023. 

“When you walk around and ask people, ‘Why don’t you choose insurance?’…It’s because they said they don’t know about insurance. They don’t know what jobs [we] have to offer, what the functions are, or how it works,” said Tanya Diedrick, vice president of risk management at H&R REIT.  “It’s not a surprise that people want to gravitate towards the industries they feel they will succeed in.” 

Plus, the industry’s tendency toward self-deprecation can be discouraging, panellists expressed. (For example, many current insurance employees explain how they “fell” into insurance, rather than chose insurance).  

The good news is, P&C insurance employees view the industry in a positive light and remain happy with their current employer, the IIC report notes. 

Yet, about 8.5% of the workforce is slated to retire over the next five years, according to the report. That means the industry has its work cut out for it to backfill its talent pool.  

“The key issue here is we’re losing intellectual capital,” said Michael Galea, senior vice president of national operations at Sedgwick. “You have people retiring, and you don’t have an appropriate [pace of] staffing [entrants].” 

To attract talent inward, the P&C industry should leverage its generous compensation rate (at least respective to the Canadian average), panellists noted. 

The average salary of P&C employees sits at $83,275. This is well above the Canadian average of $54,450.59, IIC wrote in its report.  

“If that’s not a good news story, and a reason to attract new staff, what is?” Diedrick said.  

Plus, many firms will pay for their employees to get their insurance credentials or designations.  

‘Financial assistance for insurance development and designation’ came in second on the list of methods recruiters use to attract people into the P&C industry. This method was second only to compensation, IIC said. 

Other factors worth promoting include P&C firms’ flexible work arrangements. Employees also seem to be taking their mental health very seriously, and panellists noted employee well-being programs are an important factor for recruits.  

Feature image by iStock.com/Tadamichi