According to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), in the next five years about 30% of insurance professionals will have reached retirement age. This urgent and challenging recruitment issue is a focus of the upcoming Women in Insurance Summit in Sydney on August 21.
“It creates a huge pipeline challenge and opportunity for talent,” said Sophie Krynauw (pictured). “I think the magnitude of this generational shift makes this issue a serious topic for our industry.”
Krynauw is head of operations for Canopius Australia and moderator of the Summit panel “Level Up – Closing Insurance’s Growing Skills Gap.”
She said one of the issues is a broad shift in the market dynamics and the need to focus more on retention. “The competition from other industries is higher and more businesses are realising the importance of staff retention over recruitment,” said Krynauw. “Generally, talent is expecting more from their employers.”
The Canopius leader said, given this retirement time bomb, insurance firms need to start thinking about how best to recruit the next generation of leaders who can continue to drive the insurance sector. “Or we will lose out on talent and struggle to fill the gaps,” she said.
One way her firm is meeting this challenge, she said, is by focusing on helping staff build a more resilient set of skills, including adaptability and curiosity to change. “So no matter what comes after this wave, we have a pool of talent that can embrace tomorrow’s challenges,” said Krynauw.
Another major obstacle, she said, is the difficulty budging the insurance industry’s negative image.
“We need to work on overcoming this problem,” said Krynauw. “In a tight labour market this makes it even harder to attract the right people.”
The National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) has made some efforts. Last year NIBA launched the Insure Your Future website. The platform is designed to serve as a gateway for people interested in exploring careers in insurance broking, particularly school leavers, graduates and career changers.
There’s also the need to correct misconceptions about the industry. Krynauw said her firm recently did a survey of graduates and people new to the workforce in Singapore. “One of the standout takeaways was that they were under the impression insurance professionals were less well paid than many other white-collar industries – but that’s not the case,” she said.
Krynauw said storytelling is key to overcoming the image and misconceptions issues. “The insurance industry could do a better job of sharing stories of the impact the industry has on society as a whole and the breadth of opportunities available,” she said. “Storytelling here is key - it’s our shared responsibility to attract and engage younger people.”
The way most people still find their way to an insurance job, she suggested, points to this difficult image issue. “It’s very rare you find someone who intentionally started working in the insurance industry: often people ‘fall into it’ but then stay to build a career thanks to its strong connection with helping people, society and wide-ranging opportunities,” said Krynauw.
However, she said an insurance industry job is very appealing, well paid, flexible and often global in scope. “We have a lot to offer, we just need to tell more people about it,” she said.
Canopius, she said, recently introduced a new internship program to help young people take advantage of this opportunity. Other firms are also courting new recruits with internships and graduate programs. For example, Steadfast Group opened the application process this week for its 2026 graduate program, now in its eighth year. The program runs for 12 months and offers four three-month rotations across underwriting, broking support, operations and digital transformation.
What’s the staffing situation at your insurance firm? Are you struggling to find new recruits, or not? Please tell us below.
