Insurance agencies around the globe are faced with the opportunity of attracting young agents to the field of insurance as a career. Due to the rising cost of a college education, most students are choosing fields that yield a big paycheck, such a medicine, engineering, or computer science.
A recent article published in Cover and written by Jaco de Jager titled “Attracting new insurance talent-can we learn from the land down under?” stated, “The field of insurance ranked a lowly 20th out of 21 industries that students are interested in.” Also, research performed by the company Accenture indicated that 50 percent of today’s insurance agents will retire in the next 10 years and for every two agents that retire, there is only one college graduate ready to replace them.
The insurance industry as a whole struggles to attract young talented agents. Failing to fall into one of the high-earning career categories and lack of glamour are only a few of the reasons why. With the use of social media as a major form of advertising and robust Agency Management Systems on the rise, attracting young agents with skills in technology to the insurance field becomes vastly important.
So how can you attract young insurance agents that will not only replace the leaving workforce, but bring new ideas and skills to the industry? Here is a list of suggestions for attracting young agents to the field.
- Participate in career campaign to highlight the scope of the insurance industry and the immense extent of opportunities in the field. You can accomplish this by attending career fairs and providing information booklets to high schools, universities, and tech schools outlining the benefits of working in the insurance industry.
- Offer internship opportunities to college students that have not claimed a major.
- Recognize young insurance professionals with awards and scholarships.
- Offer learning opportunities which will in turn provide the ability for upward mobility and career advancement.
- Increasing your technology, such as:
- Replace legacy core processing systems with modern systems and architectures.
- Embrace trends such as mobile devices, social media, and cloud computing.
We at SIS understand how challenging it can be to attract and retain young and talented employees. Through our collective wisdom and/or scraped knees we’ve gained along the way, we have learned that a fundamental way to attract and retain young talent is to understand them. Owner and managers should recognize that these employees are used to being able to obtain information instantaneously due to their access to data through electronic sources (i.e. Google and YouTube). This means that feedback must be frequent, transparent, and show value to the employee. This will not only assist in building strong work relationships, but instilling company values as well.
Aside from providing a solid software to help agencies run better, we aim to provide assistance in key business initiatives such as those described in this blog. For more information, please feel free to contact us at 800-747-9273 or [email protected].
