This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.
It’s no secret. Insurance companies are facing a talent crisis. It’s not that people working in the insurance industry aren’t talented. But not enough people are staying employed, and those who are are mainly preparing for impending retirement.
It is no secret that sales are high for consumer producers. One Commonly cited industry statistics More than 80% of agents say they will retire within a few years. Insurance representatives in in-house roles are typically considered more stable; Sales are on the risehas ranged from less than 10 percent to nearly 15 percent.
In some industries, high turnover rates are not surprising and do not threaten the long-term stability of the industry. Many of our retail and hospitality services are based on the premise that turnover is high and training needs to happen quickly.
In contrast, the insurance industry is one in which it can take years to learn the language, state regulations and variations, and just understand the basic order of operations. Those with decades of experience in the industry have the institutional knowledge to protect your business from making mistakes that can cost you real money, including lost productivity and fines from the state.
So how can we, as an industry, prevent our most valuable and knowledgeable assets from literally being lost?
Innovative approach aims to keep insurance insured
Longtime industry veterans Brett McKenzie and Nick Lamperelli have come together to form the community Keep Insurance In. https://insurance-nerds-unite.mn.co/, brings together insurance professionals from underwriting to marketing, operations and information technology. The Keep Insurance In website offers members a community to discuss trending topics in insurance and news, discuss office hours together, and share job opportunities such as resume writing and mock interviews .
Founded a few months ago, the community already plans to expand to offer a forum for Spanish-speaking insurance professionals, as well as a book club and job board.
The project was co-sponsored by Brett McKenzie, principal strategist and founder of CoVerse Communications and CMO of Indemnity Lab LLC, and Nick Lamperelli, managing partner of Insurance Nerds and co-founder and CEO of the Florida Insurance Advocacy Forum. Born out of a partnership with.
McKenzie said this demand actually started with her insurance communications company, CoVerse.
“We launched in the fall, when many large organizations and insurance technologists were making thousands of layoffs, and what we were trying to offer was more than just resumes. It was a time when we were inundated with people looking for a different kind of support,” McKenzie said. He said.
CoVerse was conducting triage and helping insurance professionals build resumes after decades of working with prospective employers. Mr. McKenzie spent many working hours calling contacts to connect job seekers with potential employers and to guide job seekers through the interview process.
“Every time I look at LinkedIn on my phone or laptop, I see dozens of people moving on after 30, 60, or 90 days without a job prospect,” McKenzie said.
She recognized that the people she was reaching were in a place of real hardship and need, and that was not what CoVerse was designed to support. But Mr. McKenzie did not intend to simply force talented and experienced insurance professionals out of the industry. Through the help of her insurance nerds, Mackenzie connected with Lamperelli and formed a solution.
The low-profit, high-touch community they thought they needed was too broad to rely on just one organization. By combining CoVerse’s resources with input from the Insurance Geek Braintrust and community, Keep Insurance In was born as a forum for insurance industry job seekers.
“I got laid off for the first time just over a year ago, and it took a toll on my kidneys. When I was at my lowest, when I felt like that, I went out and interviewed, and I looked at my resume and LinkedIn. You have to present your profile to the world,” McKenzie said. “Nick and I both understand that feeling. We’ve talked to other people who feel that way and we’ve made it clear that it’s not actually your fault that you’re in this situation, it’s the company’s fault and that this I wanted to create a community that could remind people that this is a sad outcome.”
Stay Insured: Community Recruits Members
One of the Keep Insurance In community’s first initiatives were office hours that Lamparelli hosted almost daily with the pilot group. Office hours can be interview tips, discussions about trending insurance news, software demos, or skills training. Recently, a planned Excel skills session turned into a discussion about modern hiring practices. The Excel session was postponed until the next morning.
Lamparelli said that while upskilling and cross-training are certainly core benefits for office hours groups, the main benefit of morning office hours is commitment.
“It’s easy to get off to a bad start if you’re not doing the work,” Lamparelli said. “The worst thing to do is not have a routine. You wake up later, and eventually you wake up and don’t take a shower. Even if you’re not working, you have to stick to that routine. Hmm, you have to get up and do something, as if you have something to do, as if you were going to work.”
Lamparelli said that by setting work hours, the job seekers he works with increase their self-esteem and often share their own metrics to maintain their schedules. He said setting goals and achieving them will help you maintain confidence, even in the face of career setbacks.
“There should be plenty of opportunity, especially in an industry where hundreds of thousands of people are retiring. You know everyone has a good chance of getting into the role that’s right for them,” McKenzie said. Ta. “In short, people can become better professionals by upskilling, cross-training, and learning how to leverage AI.”
Other ways to address talent shortages
Keep Insurance In has a job board, but the community is not yet hiring recruiters.
“We strike a balance between connecting people to work and making sure people feel safe to be authentic and vulnerable in a collaborative space,” McKenzie says. said.
This does not mean that we ignore the role that insurance companies and agents have to play as employers in the insurance industry.
“We all know that within the next 10 to 15 years, we will lose 50% of our insurance professionals to retirement,” McKenzie said. “However, due to attrition, inflexible work-life balances and some of the challenges created by the pandemic environment, we are also losing young, non-retirement talent.”
Insurers will have to face the same challenges that other employers face, including increased demands for employee flexibility and better pay. Carriers may be reluctant to allow an employee to move between roles if the position is not the best fit. And many insurance companies are missing out on employees with transferable skills. Think of an employee who performs enterprise risk assessments for school systems or who manages security vulnerabilities at an IT company.
But another problem with attracting and retaining talent in the insurance industry is the unique insurance problem of its own creation.
“There are bad stereotypes about insurance. We don’t get exposed to insurance until later in life, so we hear a lot about it and those stereotypes persist, but they usually include: There is some basis of truth. The industry itself is not resting on its laurels,” Lamperelli said. “I’ve had a very exciting career and done some very interesting and exciting things, but I never heard about how exciting insurance is.”
Mr. Lamparelli and Mr. McKenzie agreed that part of the insurance employment revolution will necessarily involve continued technology change.
“Technology has changed the insurance job. Reading manuals to evaluate homeowners insurance, doing business on floppy disks…these are uninspiring ways of working,” Lamparelli said. Ta.
To check out Mackenzie and Lamparelli’s work, keep insurance community. Or, if you’re interested in how AgentSync can help your in-house compliance and operations teams, producers, and adjusters make an insurance career more rewarding (and glory for themselves). Start the demo now.
