What Canadian P&C workers look like today

Canada’s property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry workers are more diverse, younger, and better-educated than they were five years ago, according to the Insurance Institute of Canada’s 2022-23 demographics research report.

Three-quarters of the more than 4,700 Canadian P&C industry workers self-identified as white, the report noted, but the 25% who identified as persons of colour (POC) in the latest survey was much more in line with recent Canadian census data.

“One interesting thing, according to our research, is that while we still have work to do at more senior levels, we’ve made pretty good progress on the whole of diverse representation in the industry,” Peter Hohman, president and CEO of the Insurance Institute of Canada, told Canadian Underwriter in an interview about the report results.

“That’s encouraging because in 2017, just 16% of the people identified as being non-white. So that’s a pretty remarkable improvement for the industry. We’re delighted to see that type of progress.”

Plus, as the industry gets younger and more diverse, theoretically, that will filter up into the industry’s senior leadership roles over time, improving their representation as well.

Of those who identified as POC in the demographic survey, the largest group was South Asian at 26%, followed by Chinese at 19%, Black at 15%, and Indigenous at 13%.

The industry is also getting younger.

The average age of the current iteration of Canadian P&C workers is 43.2 years, which is lower than it was in the 2017 survey (44.6 years), although it remains slightly above the average Canadian worker’s age of 42.28 years.

Of note, the numbers in the 45-54 age range outweighed the number in the 25-34 age cohort.

“A good number of people are going to be retiring in the industry in the coming years, and so that does become an issue,” Hohman commented. “Something like eight-and-a-half percent of the workforce is expecting to retire in the next five years, particularly in management positions….With the propensity of people over the age of 55 to consider early retirement, there is potential for a lot of institutional knowledge to be heading into retirement.”

Related: Knowledge transfer key as senior leaders retire: Demographic report

On the plus side, millennials still make up the industry’s largest age cohort, a result consistent with the findings in the 2017 survey, which first noted the industry’s generational shift.

“The predominant generation in the workforce has been shifting since 2009, and currently 44% are categorized as millennials,” the Institute’s report stated. “Millennials are those who were born between 1980-1995, so it is understandable that those mostly in their thirties and entering their forties comprise the largest share of the workforce. While this change occurred in 2017, it is even more substantial in 2022.

“Moreover, those who were born between 1995-2010 are categorized as Gen Z and will quickly become the generation that is entering the workforce at entry-level positions. Any shifting preferences between these generation bands in career development plans will be a central theme for firms in the industry.”

Finally, P&C workers are better-educated, the demographics study suggestd.

“About 88% of respondents in the 2022 survey had some post-secondary education compared to 82% in the 2017 survey,” the report stated. “This shift is largely driven by those with a bachelor’s degree or above, as it has increased by 13% in the past five years.

“The P&C insurance industry continues to have a level of educational attainment that is well above the national average, as 26% of eligible Canadians hold a bachelor’s degree or above, whereas 43% of P&C employees do.”

As far as the gender breakdown goes, the proportion of women to men in the industry remained unchanged since 2017, with about two-thirds of the industry identifying as women and about one-third as men.

Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/SolStock