Finding the right talent may be the biggest challenge insurers face in 2022

Even insurers’ best laid plans will come unstuck in 2022 if the unsung heroes of HR back office don't deliver the manpower.

That is one of the biggest predictions by analysts at Deloitte writing in their 2022 insurance industry outlook. "Attracting the right talent may be the biggest challenge insurers face in 2022," they said.

COVID may have pushed some out of the workforce, stimulus may have helped them stay there. Others may have taken to remote working and rewarded more flexible employers. Across the US and much of the world, unemployment rates, vacancy counts, the supply chain glitches and even the record inflation readings all speak to this being an employee's market – and insurance has not escaped the consequences.

A survey by the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers (CIAB) showed 67 percent of respondents identifying talent recruitment and development as a top priority and 74 percent calling it a top three challenge. A global survey by Deloitte showed one third expect an increase in headcount across divisions, with 43 percent agreeing it's getting harder and harder to make the grade.

Respondents in the CIAB survey spoke of "significant challenges" with focus group follow-up talk of "extremely difficult” recruitment and "a true shortage of talent, whether experienced or new." Multiple respondents admitted to twenty or more vacancies.

Employers spoke to new demands that they "be vigilant" in monitoring employee satisfaction. "Even though employees are not looking for new jobs, the new jobs are finding them and offering considerably more in this marketplace," one respondent in the CIAB survey reported.

The Q3 earnings season put the matter in unprecedented focus, with analyst calls frequently grilling managers about staffing problems in an exceptional addition to the traditional equity market concerns of earnings, capital management, dividend and the like. The topic arose again and again, notably more frequently in the US than in Europe.

"It's a constant effort and it’s a difficult marketplace for recruiting, and retention rates are modestly lower," Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg (pictured) told analysts under questioning during his company's Q3 investor call. Greenberg bragged he'd bolstered his HR capacities and beaten down the vacancy count during Q3, but with plenty of work still ahead.  "We are making progress, but you have to grind on it," he said.

The top five most difficult required skill sets to fill are all based in tech, authors of the Deloitte global insurance survey note. The toughest bills to fill: cloud engineering, data science and analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, software development, and cybersecurity.

"This could undermine transformation efforts at a time when digitization is likely to be accelerated both internally with staff and externally with customers and business partners," the Deloitte analysts wrote.

IT, cybersecurity and risk management form the nexus of most needed talent and yet most difficult find. Ye olde underwriters have slipped to least in demand and easiest stumble across, the survey data show.

Even difficulties in recruiting marketers is traceable back to the technology requirements on those posts. Be a tech savvy, search-engine social-media guru to get your way to Millennials and other customers in this day and age, employers say.

So the prediction that might stand at the end of the day could be this: expect to see the old guard cave on many lingering back-to-office expectations.

Some 87 percent of surveyed insurers said they are likely to hire remote, the Deloitte survey showed, although most of that crowd will continue to restrict themselves geographically to individuals who can still make some regular office appearance.

Asia-Pacific employers show the greatest willingness to leave the decision entirely in employee hands, the Deloitte survey showed. North American and European employers are most likely to be regimented on a strict rotating home-to-office schedule. Few think everyone will return to the (good/bad - your pick) old days.

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