Mind the gap: the pitfalls of the battle for talent

The retention and recruitment of talent is an increasingly important area of concern for many captive managers, as the sector faces the impact of what’s been described as the Great Resignation—the outflow of people who are retiring or leaving the industry.

In the first of a series of article for Captive International’s FORTY Under 40 project, we asked some of our judges whether the industry needs to find new ways of recruiting talent?

Phillip Giles, managing director of MSL Captive Solutions, said there is a real need for urgency on this matter.

“More than 50 percent of captive industry practitioners are set to retire within the next 10 years,” Giles pointed out. “This creates an immense need and opportunity for good young professionals to enter the industry and quickly advance both professionally and economically.”

Giles underlined the fact that the captives sector has been among the fastest-growing segments in the insurance industry. Captives operate in just about every traditional coverage segment of the industry: property, casualty, accident and health.

“One of the main functions of a captive is to deliver insurance capacity more efficiently than in traditional insurance markets where coverage is unavailable or inordinately expensive,” Giles said. “This opens the door to coverage ingenuity and creativity.”

Anjanette Fowler, managing director and senior vice president, Insurance & Specialised Industries Group at PNC Institutional Asset Management, told Captive International that although strides are being made to bring awareness of the vast opportunities in the captives industry, there is a persistent perception that it is “old and boring”.

Holding events at conferences such as the CICA has organised with its NextGen and Amplify Women initiatives, dedicated Happy Hours events and networking opportunities, has opened the eyes of young talent to the fact that there are others in the insurance industry who they can connect with and relate to, said Fowler.

Sandy Bigglestone, deputy commissioner of the Captive Insurance Division of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, said that new and creative ways of recruiting talent could have a tremendous impact, adding that collective efforts, even duplicative efforts in various geographic areas aimed at the same purpose, will help.

Nick Hentges, chief executive of Captive Resources, said that these days, virtually all industries need to be creative with their recruiting efforts. He pointed to existing initiatives that the industry has been carrying out, such as university outreach, eg, career fairs, speaking to students, industry programmes such as CICA’s Next Gen and the Student Essay Contest, existing DE&I programmes and the creation of intern programmes with meaningful work, so that interns can get a good idea of what the industry is like.

“Every industry needs to find a way to attract new talent and the captive industry is hamstrung because the ‘insurance’ tag automatically implies ‘boring’ to the younger generation,” Gary Osborne, vice president of Risk Partners, said. “We are a small niche and the creativity and variety of what we do needs to be communicated.”

Grainne Richmond, head of captives at Aon, agreed with this. She said that the industry does need to find new ways to recruit, attract and maintain talent in the captive space. Unfortunately, she added, due to some of the specific skillset needed the industry tends to go to the same “pot” for the talent and then doesn’t often want to spend time developing experienced insurance personnel into the captives space.

How urgent is the issue? As Captive International has pointed out in the past, much of the talk in any recent captive insurance event such as March’s CICA annual conference tends to be around people moving on to pastures new. Who’s replacing them? That question often wasn’t asked, but perhaps it’s time to.