Rebranding insurance: Tell recruits they’re changing the world

Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry needs rebranding to attract talent, and that may mean dropping the word “insurance” from recruitment messaging, delegates attending the National Insurance Conference of Canada (NICC) heard in late September.

For consumers, “insurance” may carry with it the stigma of a less-than-satisfactory past experience, as one NICC panelist observed, describing an awkward social situation no doubt common to many P&C industry professionals.

“I really have loved some of the messaging that’s covered earlier on today about elevating our profession as a whole,” said NICC panellist Traci Boland, president of the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada.

“There may be the stigma of going to the house party and somebody asking you, ‘What do you do?’ and you’re actually afraid to say insurance, because you’re going to get all of the bad stories thrown at you and [hear] what happened to their cousin and their aunt. I would love for that to be changed in the next couple of years to say, ‘You know what? This is a great industry…..’

“We’re all here and we all love insurance,” she told convention delegates. “We’re insurance geeks, right? We need to speak with one voice to ensure that everybody out there understands that you can absolutely do anything in insurance. You can be in claims, you can be a broker, you can be an agent, you can be vice president, you can rule the world. That is one thing I would love to see: there is one voice going forward to elevate our industry.”

At a different NICC panel the next day, one speaker suggested the stigma around “insurance” may be so great that the word should be dropped in recruitment efforts. Instead, the fundamentals of insurance — problem-solving and helping people in time of need — should be emphasized.

“One thing [panellists raised] is the appeal of the industry around social change,” said NICC panelist Dawn Miller, commercial director of Lloyd’s in Canada. “Just as a quick anecdote, one of the leading European parametric insurance companies is quite large — very, very large now — but only about five years old. Their CEO recently was telling me he’s got 100 to 150 data scientists, and they’ve gone well beyond your traditional sort of crop insurance.

“And I asked him, ‘How do you engage new talent?’ Because [we’re] having this whole discussion around how to make our industry more attractive.

“And he goes, ‘Because they don’t know they work for an insurance company.’

“I said, ‘Seriously?’ And he said, ‘If I told them they worked for an insurance company, they wouldn’t join. They think they’re saving the world by plugging protection gaps….”

“Hey, that’s what I do when I go home and talk to my kids—” said Rob Marsh, president of Liberty Mutual Canada.

“—Daddy’s saving the world,” Miller intervened.

“One risk at a time,” quipped Steve Pottle, chair of the Canadian chapter of Risk Insurance and Management Services, and director of risk management services at Thompson Rivers University.

There is some truth behind the panelists’ use of humour to illustrate the point. While they may not need superhero powers, brokers of the future will need to be sociable and master the art of creative problem-solving, panellists observed.

“The key things I would look for in a broker going forward is being adaptable, being open to change, and having an outlook that relationships are important,” said Boland. “Maybe somebody’s sitting in a cubicle that doesn’t want to talk to anybody and wearing iPods in the office all day. In my office, that’s maybe that’s not the best fit.

“What I try to look for in a broker…is somebody that can walk into a room and can just go. They talk to everybody the room and can be that person who’s comfortable in those situations.”

Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/Tashatuvango