Why the industry’s talent should match its relevance

For many years, our industry has worried about whether talented people wanted to join insurance. That question now feels increasingly out of date. 

The ambition should not be for insurance to be a profession that bright students and graduates might happen upon. It should be one they actively choose.

The generation now entering the market has grown up alongside the risks we spend our time analysing. They are the first cohort of professionals to have lived almost entirely with algorithmic decision-making as part of daily life. 

They came of age during a global pandemic that reshaped how we think about systemic exposure. 

The most effective rising professionals will not succeed by waiting to be told what to think. They are eager to step forward, ready to lead and motivated to solve problems.

Vicky Carter, Guy Carpenter

They understand, almost instinctively, that disruption is not a temporary interruption but a condition of modern business. Senior leaders may be responsible for pricing and structuring these risks, but younger colleagues have experienced many of them first-hand. That is not a gap to be closed. It is an advantage to be recognised.

Evolving risks

The risk landscape has changed profoundly. 

Today’s defining threats are no longer distant or abstract; they are immediate, interconnected and firmly on the board agenda. Whether it is conflict disrupting trade routes, executives confronting questions of AI liability, or governments grappling with geopolitical instability, these are issues that reach insurance markets quickly and with material consequence. 

Our sector often sees them early, partly because clients bring them to us, but also because brokers and advisers have a responsibility to identify emerging threats and raise them with clients before they fully crystallise. 

That places insurance in a position of real relevance, but also real responsibility.

Meeting that moment requires more than just better recruitment. It requires a more serious commitment to development. The market has not always evolved at the same pace as the risks it is being asked to understand, quantify and advise on. 

Yet that is precisely where the opportunity lies. If risk is becoming more complex, then capability has to be built earlier, more deliberately and with greater confidence than in the past.

The most effective rising professionals will not succeed by waiting to be told what to think. They are eager to step forward, ready to lead and motivated to solve problems. 

They will want to contribute judgment on risks, a sharper instinct for how clients want to be served, and the confidence to challenge assumptions formed for a different era. The firms that create that environment will do more than retain good people. 

They will build better underwriters, better brokers, better advisers and, ultimately, better outcomes for clients. Investment in talent is not a long-term gesture. It is a present commercial necessity.

Artificial intelligence

The arrival of artificial intelligence only strengthens that case. It does not make human judgment less important; it makes it more so. Tools can process information at extraordinary scale, but they cannot replace judgment, context or accountability. 

Data may tell you what has happened. It still takes experience, curiosity and commercial understanding to determine what that means for a client making decisions in real time. 

The generation now coming into the market is particularly well placed to work alongside these tools, not despite their age but because of it. They are native to the environment in which these technologies have emerged.

The insurance industry built its position by pricing risk without precedent and by taking on complexity others would not. Preserving that position will require the same instinct now. The talent is there. The question is whether our industry will move decisively enough to develop it.