Insurance Industry Challenges

In a market where there is enormous complexity and increased regulation, the insurance industry faces many challenges maintaining, and ideally increasing, the technical capability of its people to improve business performance and provide competitive advantage. How many of these are familiar to you?

• Margins from an extended soft market are wafer-thin and training and development have been squeezed in a costs conscious world
• Feedback from the market – insurers and brokers alike – is that there is an ageing population of experts across many fields – particularly in underwriting, claims and risk – with limited succession plans in place to replace them
• Flatter organisational design, down-sizing involving loss of experienced staff, the predominance of process, and increased technology have all impacted adversely on the industry’s ability to grow enough people with expert technical skills
• Need to attract and retain young people who demand professional technical development
• The complexity of insurance and the world it insures, grows year on year – with some features being the internationalisation of risks, the speed of innovation and communication, and new science, tools and technology
• Customer expectations are unrecognisable compared to 20 years ago with ever increasing demand for customer service, access to self-service solutions, and rapid dissemination of poor service stories via modern social media, which could result in reputational damage and lead to reduced shareholder value
• The industry faces an ever increasing pressure from regulators for insurance employees to develop professionally within an environment of increasing legislation and other changes
• The need for expertise is paramount but limited in availability – pushing up costs through strategic errors, day to day mistakes (underwriting and claims leakage) and higher salaries demanded by the fewer in number experts
• Underwriting and claims expertise differentiates organisations from their competitors and directly drives profitability
• AND running an in-house team of experts in the design and delivery of complex training solutions is a significant ongoing expense to a business