TALENT
Get them while they’re young
While there is still a diversity issue in the insurance industry, there is also a significant challenge when it comes to attracting and retaining young talent.
This is according to Junior Garba, chief executive officer of ACINRecruit and co-founder of the African-Caribbean Insurance Network (ACIN). He was sharing some insights with Intelligent Insurer about the graduate schemes and apprenticeship programmes across the market.
In what Garba believes will be a positive move for the industry, he says that many organisations are downsizing their graduate cohorts and upsizing their apprenticeship cohorts for three important reasons.
“First, they get the young talent early which provides the opportunity to train and develop this talent. Second, companies save on agency fees and other costs associated with paying recruiters. Finally, organisations have found that their retention rates around apprenticeships and early career development is so much better than those that come from graduate programmes,” Garba says.
“In an industry where a third of the market is over 50 years of age and the number of people in their 30s is declining year on year, we can see that the industry has a challenge in attracting and retaining young people. In fact, a recent industry study by ACORD showed that only 4 percent of young people are aware of career opportunities in the insurance industry and feel attracted to the idea of pursuing insurance as a career,” said Garba.
Better business and capability
Garba asserted that organisations are not halting graduate programmes but that they have instead put them on ice while the focus has shifted to a strategy that may be better for business in the long run.
“Essentially, apprenticeship programmes are becoming far more crucial to organisations than graduate programmes and by placing more weight on apprenticeships, organisations are experiencing better retention rates,” he said.
Garba addressed some common misconceptions that he believes still exist in the insurance industry when it comes to education.
“There is a misconception in the industry that you must have a degree to become an underwriter, and historically there has been a culture of elitism and recruitment from specific universities. But if you are trained early on you are just as capable.
“A university education or a certain type of university education is not an option for everyone for many different reasons.
“Loosening the university requirements has a direct impact on increasing the diversity of your talent pool,” he said.
“Greater diversity is more likely to improve retention and decision-making.”
Junior Garba, ACINRecruit
Aggressive targets
Garba believes that while the London Market has made significant strides in promoting diversity, the market is still very far off from where it should be.
The Lloyd’s Culture Dashboard 2021 showed that the current representation of ethnic minority colleagues in the market is 8 percent and Lloyd’s are setting an ambitious goal where one third of all new hires across the market should come from ethnic minority backgrounds.
“What we are seeing now is more regulatory pressure, and some ambitious targets from Lloyd’s. But the reason we have these targets is because when you look at employment statistics, they do not reflect the wider population,” he said.
According to Garba diversity and inclusion has been one-dimensional for a while with its focus mainly on gender. Now there is greater focus on other important areas such as ethnicity, disability, and LGBQT+ that are now all being recognised as their own independent work streams.
“Many firms have recently begun recruiting dedicated diversity and inclusion managers who are scrutinising the traditional recruitment channels and asking recruiters tough questions about the types of candidates that are being put forward. They are then going back to these agencies and demanding greater diversity.
“We are now seeing diversity and inclusion being viewed through the lens of risk management and insurers are now more aware of the significant reputational risk associated with not having strong diversity and inclusion practices in place.
“By engaging with more diversity and inclusion practices within your organisation and making people feel more included you can somewhat mitigate that risk,” said Garba.
He noted that the relationship between diversity and profitability is not direct but indirect.
“By having more diversity at every level of the company you can make better decisions that reflect your customer base more accurately. Greater diversity is more likely to improve retention and decision-making and that in turn leads to increased profitability,” said Garba.
“We have made great strides in the diversity landscape but there is still a long way to go.”
Taking it back
It was based on this premise that ACINRecruit was established. In 2018 Garba and Godwin Sosi established ACIN with the support of their two founding sponsors: Tokio Marine Kiln and Lloyd’s.
As two young underwriting professionals the two found themselves frustrated with the diversity landscape of the insurance sector and the level of under-representation of black professionals.
As they set about making the insurance sector a more attractive destination for young ethnic professionals to create a sense of community they stumbled on an opportunity.
“It started out as a network that held several events, workshops, and networking opportunities, all of which is a very important part of the organisation today. Over time we started rallying thousands of students across the country and making them aware of opportunities in the insurance sector. It wasn’t long before insurance companies started knocking on our door to tap into that talent pool.
“It was at this point we realised that there was a big gap in the market and that there were a lot of companies that wanted to diversify their workforce but did not have the knowhow to do so. We saw that gap and decided to step into the space,” said Garba.
ACINRecruit was formed as the talent acquisition arm of the ACIN and works in much the same way as a traditional recruitment agency, providing end-to-end recruitment services to brokers and carriers across the market with a focus on entry and graduate level.
“Our thinking was that if we are going to change the industry, we need to start at the grassroots level and develop at early career level. We are pleased to say that we have exceeded our expectations with a record number of hires. Now we are looking at mid-level recruitment and in future, we hope to take that to the executive level search.”
ACINRecruit aims to align its efforts with the market’s aggressive diversity targets and tough demands to improve diversity in the market.
Garba has left his career in underwriting and plans to recruit more personnel to increase recruitment efforts across the industry and beyond the London Market to meet those aggressive diversity targets.
He says that ACINRecruit is here to help the industry diversify its talent pool while helping recent graduates get their foot in the door.
“To build the workforce of the future we need to bridge the gap between diverse talent and help the insurance sector. We have made great strides in the diversity landscape but there is still a long way to go,” he concluded.
Image: Shutterstock / fizkes
