August/September 2021 - Insurance News (Magazine)

Page 25

Where have all the experts gone? …and where will the new experts come from? A skills crisis across the industry is sparking calls for a talent renewal strategy By Bernice Han

T

he past few months have been extremely busy for Sydney-based national loss adjuster Technical Assessing. Not only did the company recently open an office in Canberra, it also made a number of new hires to support its fast-growing business across the country. Recruitment of specialists for the insurance industry is often a difficult and complex process, and Managing Director David Cambridge says the problem is growing – there simply aren’t enough people available to take technically challenging jobs. “There is a talent war going on right now,” Mr Cambridge tells Insurance News. “I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better, because this takes a long time to fix.” Industry insiders and headhunting firms in Australia say they have never seen anything quite like it. It isn’t just loss adjusters that are hard to find; underwriters, brokers, claims managers, actuaries and other specialist insurance professionals are also in short supply.

Vacancies in critical back-end supporting positions such as broker assistants and claims support consultants are proving equally difficult to fill as well – a sign of just how tight the insurance labour pool is at the moment. To address the current labour crunch, insurance firms have had to think out of the box to attract and retain talent, coming up with innovative tactics to secure the staff they need. Technical Assessing, for example, has moved its bonus scheme to a quarterly basis from annually. It has also in recent years operated a cadet program where a junior adjuster who may be completing their tertiary qualifications can gain experience and be mentored by senior and executive adjusters. If anything has come to define the economic side-effects of the pandemic, it is shortages. The world is running low in just about everything from computer memory chips, cars, building materials, and consumer goods to skilled manpower. The Morrison Government’s strict COVID border closure policy has virtually choked the supply of high-calibre experienced specialist candidates from traditional sources such as the UK, the US and South Africa.

But recruitment experts say the broader labour squeeze affecting the industry at present has been years in the making. Human resources agency Hays warned five years ago that the insurance industry was facing a shortage of skilled executives and would have trouble filling vacancies. Hays says in its latest salary guide that the industry will remain an “active job market” over the next 12 months, with high demand for professionals with specialist knowledge. Cyber underwriters and cyber claims consultants are in greatest demand at present, with insurers finding it hard to fill vacancies because cyber is still a reasonably new product. The widely shared consensus is that years of under-investment in talent scouting and development, particularly at the university level, have finally caught up with the industry. And it is now paying the price for not giving as much attention as it should have to tertiary students who have so many career options to choose from. It’s a “perfect storm” hitting the industry at the worst

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August/September 2021

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