Insurers lead with culture in taking on the talent challenge

Insurance carriers are not immune from the talent and recruitment crunch spurred by the post-pandemic “Great Resignation” and other factors. 

At the 2022 DIG IN conference, “The Talent Challenge” panel addressed the obstacles to improving retention across the industry as companies struggle to fill open positions required to advance the digital transformation of the sector. Insurance professionals, insurtech startup leaders and software developers shared their personal insights on how to prime the industry for digitization, use data in a meaningful way and, ultimately, create business environments and culture that best benefit agents – resulting in an improved customer experience. 

Panel 1: Preparing Your Workforce for Automation 
First up, panelists examined the industry’s reluctance to automation. The panel acknowledged that a fear exists among agents – many feel that automating more insurance processes will result in mass unemployment; similarly, others feel that their lack of digital knowledge will leave them behind as others advance at a much faster rate. 

“It’s important to recognize that that’s a real fear. Now, there’s also an opportunity that exists,” said James Kaufman, Senior Director at Willis Towers Watson (WTW). Kaufman believes that by using technology to reduce the significance of certain roles through simplified decision making, streamlined processes and enhanced speed and accuracy, opportunities will open for other important skill sets and roles. 

The coming wave of automation in the insurance industry will present more opportunities for companies to cross-train and expand into analytics. “Really, automation is not a threat only,” Kaufman stated. “It’s also an opportunity to take advantage of some of the new skill sets that are of increased importance… Analytics is really what enables a lot of that automation.” Improved and continued technology training efforts can help mitigate these fears and create more opportunities for employees, the panel also suggested. 

Panelists also considered that employee retention, another issue facing the insurance industry, may be solved through automation. Kaufman shared that one of WTW’s automation partners performed an internal case study that exhibited increased retention as a result of more internal digitized processes. “The employees are going to be able to focus on more interesting, value-added, rewarding work in their day-to-day lives… There is an employee retention play to this,” Kaufman added. 

Panel 2: Building a Digital-first Culture in the Great Resignation
This segment focused on the importance of culture to empowered staffers. Employees are looking for opportunities to do meaningful work and enhance their careers. It was noted that lay-offs and resignations in the technology sector can be seen as hiring opportunities in the insurtech and insurance spaces, as long as companies are willing to offer proper training. 

“If you’re doing a digital transformation, or if you’re looking for this digital skill, make it about the talent and don’t make it about the technology,” said Abel Travis, Vice President of Underwriting and Product Innovation at AF Group. “Then, what we can ensure that we tell people is that we can give them the opportunity to work in an organization, in an industry, that is doing so well and doing a lot of good for the customers that we’re serving.” 

Panelists also suggested that insurance companies must be open to hiring talent from different industries and willing to train individuals with transferable skills. David T. Vanalek, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary of Richmond National, noted that if “business needs shift, creating that transparency, creating those opportunities to train in other skill sets and promoting into those particular roles – that will retain that individual.” As companies grow and advance in their technologies, management must be willing to shift focus towards continued training of new and current employees. 

Panel 3: The Voice of the Developer 
In order to bring a wider range of perspectives into the conversation, this final panel, consisting of software engineers from the insurtech space, echoed that investing in technology and in training will only positively impact companies. Gary Carter, Enterprise Architect at EMC Insurance Companies, believes companies should always continue to invest in technology. 

“Technology should be agnostic. You should be able to move from tool to tool, language to language. Technology should not be to your impediment but to your development,” Carter said. “Then once you ‘tool’ [employees] properly, train them properly. Give them areas where they can influence the organization, and reach beyond just a single segment. Reach into what drives the business, educate them – not just on the technical side of things, but on the business aspects.” 

The panelists also discussed that, although many in the industry possess the technology, AI and machine learning may not always be used to its full potential. Daniel Bullington, Director of Software Engineering at Arch Insurance, stated that many companies are “slow-walking capabilities and are still very risk averse. If you’re still managing your cloud infrastructure, like you manage a data center, that’s a huge red flag for me as an engineer and as an engineering leader.” 

Bullington continued to emphasize the significance of truly and wholly adopting new, advanced technologies as a way to “disrupt,” referencing keynote speaker Linda Bernardi’s speech on positive industry disruption.  

“The real disruptor is doing it well, doing it the right way and getting out of the comfort zone and not trying to shoehorn the practices and the risk aversion of the past that’s very inherent with the insurance industry,” Bullington explained. “Ultimately, all you’re doing is really recreating the worldviews you’ve had, but not truly disrupting. Because again, you’re managing things the same way. I think the true disruptor is getting out of your comfort zone and embracing these technologies like cloud.”

August Dwight, Software Engineering Manager at Arch Insurance Group Inc., added that he, like many other employees of the industry, looks forward to the digital advancement of the insurance space. 

“I’m most excited about the artificial intelligence and machine learning advances. There are systems now that can get a picture of a property and just assess the risk associated with that. Systems that can take a picture of a car and say, ‘That’s $30,000 worth of damage.’ Working with these new systems, these new technologies, it’s the stuff of science fiction,” Dwight stated.