SURVEY
The war for tech and talent
Just below the increasingly frantic debates over rate and capacity, there is a growing awareness in Baden-Baden that the industry needs fresh talent—urgently.
It has been hard this week to get delegates to Baden-Baden’s annual reinsurance meeting to talk about long-term challenges. The challenges around capacity, structure and price are dominating proceedings as cedants worry about getting the coverages they need and reinsurers seek to hold the line on resetting pricing and structures.
This is in stark contrast to these meetings in softer markets. Then, long-term issues could be discussed. ESG was gaining traction as a concern for the industry, as was how the industry makes sense of and leverages the plethora of advances in technology in recent years, all tipped to transform various parts of the industry.
Although it might be difficult to discuss such issues in the increasingly frenetic meetings in Baden-Baden this week, it was possible to ask executives in advance, which we did in our pre-Baden-Baden survey, designed to outline the concerns of the market and potential talking points at this event.
In the last instalment of those results (see Baden-Baden Today days 1 and 2 for the others), we did manage to solicit responses around how the industry is grappling with new technologies—and what they see as some of the softer pertinent issues.
While the approaches to technology were somewhat split, a majority indicated they are leaning towards developing technologies in-house—something that will be of great interest to the thousands of insurtechs baying for the attention of insurers and reinsurers. That said, a large percentage said they were doing this, but with external partners.
“A majority indicated they are leaning towards developing technologies in-house.”
“The pendulum has swung to some extent on the way the C-suite is approaching this,” one respondent said. “For several years, CEOs were inundated with well-funded insurtechs all looking to change their business and model, via their operations, their costs, their underwriting—you name it.
“Now, more have decided to take a step back. Instead of being pitched to, they have tasked their own executives to assess first what they really need. What are the real priorities? Then they will go to market and select businesses to work with. It is a big change in approach.”
Profitability tops the charts
On other talking points in Baden-Baden, profitability topped the chart, perhaps predictably. Talent management was not far behind, perhaps indicating some link to the other question about the desire to built out skills and solutions in-house. Certainly, responses around this indicated that the need for more diverse talent was a pragmatic issue rather than something driven by ESG.
“The fact is, too many re/insurers have senior leaders who are simply not tech-savvy, not attuned to the way younger generations want to work, want to buy products, and want to engage with companies.
“There is an acceptance that the future of this industry does not sit with more men in grey suits, but in a new generation of talent who can truly modernise then industry.”
Main image: Shutterstock / ImageFlow
