WOMEN IN RE
No ‘silver bullet’ for slow gender equality progress in insurance
Women account for only 22 percent of executive committee members across the UK financial services sector, according to the 2021 Women in Finance Charter.
While representation is improving, progress towards gender equality remains frustratingly slow. Last year, Swiss Re Institute research found that women represented about a fifth of re/insurance company executives in 2019 and only 10 percent of CEOs.
Why is progress taking so long? Intelligent Insurer invited a panel of experts to answer this question, and discuss how companies can do their part.
Shruti Deshmukh, product manager, models at RMS, believes the fact that progress towards gender equality remains slow is “astounding” when you look at the numbers.
“At the entry level, women do pretty well in the insurance sector as compared to other sectors. We have the right women joining the workforce at the right time but the numbers slow down as you look at senior leadership.
“That’s appalling because it’s not as though there aren’t any women—there are women, you just don’t have the right career pathways for them,” she added.
Melissa Collett, professional standards director at the Chartered Insurance Institute, warned that the reasons behind why it is taking so long for women to ascend in the industry create a “complex picture” and that there isn’t a “silver bullet” to change this.
There are barriers unique to women, she said, citing maternity leave, women taking on the lion’s share of childcare, and continued microagressions against women and girls who are “expected to conform to certain stereotypes and not be too assertive”.
Collett added that the 25x25 initiative is trying to get 25 percent of women as executives in the FTSE 100 companies by 2025, in order to address leaderships gap. Currently, only 9 percent CEOs are women.
“To me that’s very stark and demonstrates that measures still need to be taken to address that,” she said.
There is reason for some optimism, according to Lara Pedley, managing director, global at ISC Group.
“Working in the diversity and inclusion space over the last six years, and specifically in insurance, I have seen organisations doing that deep dive into why their company is the way it is, where talent is in the organisation and putting in place policies and initiatives to try and make that change.
“However, progress remains quite slow compared to other industries in financial services and also more broadly,” she said.
“There are women, you just don’t have the right career pathways for them.”
Shruti Deshmukh, RMS
A different process
There may be no silver bullet, but it’s clear that companies across the reinsurance industry need to be a driving force in achieving equality. One way to drive equality is dealing with microaggressions head-on.
Lisa Bartlett, president, UK & Ireland at Crawford & Company, said: “We all have to get more accepting of the fact that we have a multigenerational workforce. Here at Crawford, we have five generations in the workplace, so when those microaggressions happen, for me it’s an opportunity to educate.”
At PartnerRe, where Abina Kealy serves as chief accounting officer, a lot of time is spent actively discussing how to increase the representation of all employee groups across the executive and senior management groups.
Also key are mentorship and sponsorship—but these activities, according to panellists, could do with some improvement.
Kealy added that mentorship and sponsorship are very successful as “you need that voice at the decision-making table and you need that person sponsoring you … often outside your department or peer group”, but it can be challenging to put in place.
“Women are largely the primary caregivers,” said Bartlett. “Returning to work after career breaks can affect women’s confidence so the networking and mentoring support has to be much better than it is right now.”
The panellists also discussed the benefits of a “blind” promotion process.
Marisa Savage, partner in the PwC Bermuda insurance practice, said that when her organisation undertakes a promotion, it is a roundtable process with very clear requirements for each level.
“We all have to get more accepting of the fact that we have a multigenerational workforce.”
Lisa Bartlett, Crawford & Company
“I’ve been trying to encourage the idea that we should take names out of it. This is more of a blind process to remove the gender issue. It would help remove that lens and remove the affinity because a lot of the promotion process comes from that affinity, as opposed to what work the candidate has done, and does that speak to her or him being ready for promotion,” she said.
Pedley agreed on the importance of blind promotions, but went one step further.
“What are the profiles on the table? Do we need to do a step before that to make sure that the profiles coming into the mix are all the ones deserving of a promotion? Are they there because they have an active sponsor, or are they being analysed on another metric?” she asked.
“Sponsorship is traditionally created through networking. A number of initiatives are trying to combat that to make it more equal, but I don’t think we’re there yet. Having that step before the blind process on promoting is quite important.”
Collett agreed that in larger companies a blind promotion process could work well, but in smaller companies that may be difficult.
“My own career experience is that promotion depends on relationships and networking. Networking is something that is so important for your career, and women need to network in order to progress at those more senior levels,” she said.
Essentially, it seems that the re/insurance industry may not have a problem with women joining, but at the upper echelons of many companies there is a dearth of women and this has been very slow to change. To combat this, companies need to truly focus on making a change, through new processes and activities.
“We should take a moment to be proud of the progress we’re making. There is absolutely much to do, but post-pandemic we’ve been given a great opportunity to make a difference for women leaders of the future.” Bartlett concluded.
Image: Shutterstock / Krakenimages.com
