Lloyd’s is in danger of suffering a “talent drought” unless new recruits come into the industry in the next few years, research has revealed.
A survey of Lloyd’s managing agents by Hays Insurance has revealed that the market faces a talent shortage due to the lack of graduate schemes in place.
The survey said that just 25% of the 46 managing agents that responded had a graduate scheme set up.
Hays, a recruitment consultancy, said: “Unless new entrants come into the industry over the next few years the talent drought and inevitable ‘talent wars’ will adversely affect the market.
“Having more graduate schemes or better advertising for the industry could make the market more attractive and would be useful to generate stronger talent and attract more candidates to enter the industry, plugging the talent gap for the future.”
Problematic areas of recruitment highlighted in the survey included audit and compliance vacancies, as well as policy wordings and catastrophe modelling positions.
Mark Butterworth, chairman of the Lloyd’s Market Association’s (LMA) professional standards committee, which works on all aspects of professional development, agreed that the Hays’ survey highlighted an important issue.
But he insisted the LMA online initiative, www.graduatesatlloyds.com, was already tackling the problem.
He said: “It has been recognised, not just in our field, that you have to compete for talent. There is also a special need for Lloyd’s to communicate what opportunities there are and what the market is, as it has not always been transparent to outsiders.”
The LMA’s graduate recruitment portal was launched in September 2006 in a bid to attract more applications to the Lloyd's market from the graduate community.
Twenty companies, including managing agents and brokers, are now taking part in the online scheme, which gets more than 800 hits a week and is thought to have resulted in graduate jobs entering double figures.
