Technology advancements a ‘plus point’ for recruiting younger talent to industry

Technological advancements in the insurance industry can be seen as a “plus point” for bringing new talent into the insurance industry.

That was according to Sasha Jory, chief information officer at Hastings Direct, who said there was “a lot of change” happening in the industry and that technology would be key in securing younger candidates as older employees retire over the next few years.

According to a report entitled Providing for tomorrow today: Understanding an aging workforce, which was published in July 2023 by legal services firm Osbourne Clarke, workers in the financial services sector, including insurance, are expected to retire by around 63-years-old.

However, a survey by the Chartered Insurance Institute revealed that 60% of young talent found the insurance industry “boring” and only 30% would consider it as a career.

The findings were based on a survey of 50 participants between the ages of 14-22 in April 2023.

Despite this, Jory felt that insurance can be “really attractive” and that technology presented opportunities.

“We have a lot of change happening in the insurance industry,” she said during a panel session entitled The Future of Talent at the Guidewire Connections 2023 conference in Nashville (13 November 2023).

“Being in an organisation that is constantly pushing the boundary of where technology is going and being able to sell that to people is an exciting opportunity.”

AI

The use of artificial intelligence (AI), such as large language models (LLMs), is one example of advancements taking place in the industry.

LLMs are a computer algorithm that process natural language input and predict the next word based on what it has seen previously.

An example of this would be ChatGPT, which some firms in the insurance industry have started to use.

For example, earlier this year (27 March 2023), insurer Zurich said it was experimenting with ChatGPT as it explored how it could use the technology for tasks such as extracting data for claims and modelling.

Jory said that through Hastings Direct’s apprentice programme, young talent without qualifications in technology were being given an opportunity to “do the work”.

“Some of those people do choose to move on from our organisation, but I think it’s about the greater good,” she added.

“And you take that capability across the insurance market into other areas that are designed to create some level of competition.”