Talent gap: It’s time for the juniors to step up

He said it’s particularly challenging right now finding talent to fill senior account manager and divisional manger positions who are usually expected to have about 10 years of industry experience.

“A company will always look internally first. They will look at their internal account executives and consider them for these positions first and foremost,” said Toth.

However, he said, with a widespread skills shortage inside companies, those firms have needed to look outside more often for talent which is increasing this squeeze in the market.

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Toth said more junior staff did start appearing in the insurance job market three to four years ago.

“They’re still a little bit too junior to step into those portfolio manager and divisional manager positions,” he said.

As a result, he said, there are enormous challenges finding staff with seven to 10 years of insurance industry experience.

“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the most in-demand role at the moment is companies looking for senior account managers to manage large portfolios and to train staff. Unfortunately, the talent in the market isn’t there,” said Toth.

The Kona Recruitment boss said there are two ways firms can respond to this challenge. Some are rethinking their expectations around these senior management roles.

“So, let’s maybe look at taking one of those more junior account executives, giving them more responsibility and then bringing in someone even more junior under them,” he said.

Toth said he’s seeing companies making more concessions around how experienced and qualified a candidate needs to be before moving into a senior role.

“We’re having this exact conversation with a lot of our clients where they say they want someone with 10 years’ experience to manage, for example, a professional indemnity portfolio of $1.5 million. We can then say with some level of certainty that that person actually isn’t going to be out there in the market and if they are, the remuneration required would be beyond ridiculous,” said Toth.

The alternative option, said Toth, is to bring in someone with about five years of experience who may need significant upskilling but who is ambitious and motivated.

“Then maybe plug some of the more administrative duties of that portfolio with a very junior staff member. It’s not going to be a perfect fit, but what you are going to have is someone at that level who can be client-side and market facing,” he said.

Companies, he said, are also increasingly considering candidates from very different product lines. Toth said this option is particularly useful for underwriters or brokers in the financial lines sector which he described as “one of the hardest roles to recruit for in the market at the moment.”

“Now, it’s not ideal to take someone potentially from property or commercial motor and get them to go and do the role of a senior financial lines underwriter,” he said.

However, Toth said if the candidate has a “fundamental understanding of what it means to be successful in the role, product aside,” any challenges can be mitigated if the firm can invest heavily in training and mentoring.

Cross department recruiting, said Toth, has now become a necessity rather than just an option.

“This is where it’s really crazy. So if you go back three years to pre pandemic, the idea of me saying to one of my clients who’s looking for a financial lines underwriter, ‘Would you consider someone from heavy motor or commercial property or liability?’ That would have been insane!” said Toth.

That’s all changed.

“At the end of the day they need someone to underwrite those policies. Is it going to be perfect for the first six months? No, but they need someone to do the job,” he said.

Toth conceded that this does put pressure on a company’s training and mentoring offerings. In the current talent crunch where businesses are understaffed, senior employees don’t have the time to mentor junior colleagues.

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“It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that someone’s cup is going to run dry and someone’s going to miss out,” he said.

However, there are some industry training and education options.

“We’re very fortunate in insurance to have places like NIBA and ANZIIF to help potentially in some capacity with the training but it is one of the biggest problems in insurance right now,” he said.

Toth said the number of third-party training providers who can offer specific product based training for the insurance industry “almost doesn’t exist.”

“I really wouldn’t be surprised if in the next couple of years, you start to see more companies coming out of the woodwork offering training because it’s a guaranteed winner,” said Toth.