Tackling the urgent manpower challenge in insurance

BUSINESSES today face many challenges but chief among them is a manpower crunch.

The insurance industry in particular is facing a critical situation. The job vacancy rate for 2022 stood at 4.1 per cent, the highest average annual rate since at least 1998. Another survey by the Manpower Group showed that 80 per cent of employers in the finance industry could not find the talent they needed.

This manpower crunch is especially tough on the insurance industry because much of our interaction remains human-to-human. People want to see their financial advisers in the flesh and get advice from them in person.

To be fair, these are not new issues. Recruitment for the industry has been a challenge for many years. But the problems are now made more stark by the tight labour market in Singapore, with competition rising for a smaller pool of talent.

As such, confronting the manpower crunch will be a critical part of the industry’s challenge. How can we tackle the problem?

Build interest, initiate growth

I believe tackling this challenge will rest on three key pillars: to interest, to initiate, and to inspire.

The first is to tackle a perception problem that the industry continually suffers from. Many believe that insurance is just about sales. It is not. Insurance is a financial instrument that can safeguard individuals against unforeseen circumstances; financial planning is at the heart of it.

Much of the work is sophisticated behind the scenes, such as actuarial analyses, product development, underwriting, and claims processing. These call for select skills ranging from statistics to software engineering and management skills.

To meet the needs of the complex future economy, we have had to draw on talent pools outside our traditional sources and interest them to take a leap. For instance, as part of Income’s efforts to stay ahead of the disruption curve, we started our Digital Transformation Office (DTO) in 2017.

Many of the hires for the DTO have been from outside the insurance industry, such as fintech, customer experience designers, agile professionals, scrum masters and the like. This has helped boost diversity and grow perspectives, allowing us to seed new ideas and drive innovation in our organisation.

However, even as we move to acquire new talent, we must remain focused on upgrading and retaining the talent we already have. That is why the second pillar, initiate, is critical to ensuring that our people upkeep with skills they need to stay relevant in the future economy.

Take the importance of data. Today, everything runs on data, from analytics to artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT.

Knowing that it is crucial for all employees to be data-literate, we started all our colleagues on a data curriculum back in 2021. The curriculum is tailored to the staff’s work requirements and introduces different modules that include visualisation, AI, and making data-driven decisions.

Design thinking was the other critical skill. Snack, a bite-sized insurance and investment proposition, was sparked by design thinking and has gained great traction in Singapore. The financial lifestyle app stemmed from a big question we asked ourselves: How can we reduce the barrier to entry for insurance for the general public, and expand access to underserved customers such as gig workers and students?

We worked with customers to develop Snack through multiple focus groups. With their help, we came up with a simple idea: develop a product that is extremely low-cost while fitting itself directly into people’s lifestyles. The result was an unconventional model that did not seek to replace but rather complement traditional insurance, with the objective of embedding itself into lifestyles. In developing this product, cross-functional teams had to collaborate and adopt new ways of working.

The mix of diverse backgrounds and new ways of working in our workforce has in turn allowed us to elevate job roles and create more value in the work that our colleagues do.

To inspire

Third, we must continue to inspire potential entrants by demonstrating that the work we do is about protecting people’s lives by means of providing a financial safety net.

This may seem high-sounding, but the reality is that the younger workforce places great emphasis on purpose, even more so than profit. And it is something that employers must pay close attention to.

A Randstad survey in 2022 showed that 41 per cent of workers in Singapore would rather be unemployed than feel unhappy in the workplace.

Apart from focusing on things such as flexible work or salary levels – all of which are necessary but not sufficient conditions – imbibing a sense of purpose in the work we do will go a long way to hire and retain talent.

Indeed, financial planning is more than just dollars and cents. It is a professional service, and we need to constantly remind our people that it has a crucial social role. A sound financial plan will provide and afford financial protection and a safety net for consumers’ peace of mind. Through proper representation of the value of insurance, the hope is that consumers will, in turn, have an even greater appreciation of its relevance and importance as well.

In other words, the industry must aim for a nobler purpose; one that puts people first – both our own people and the people we work for.

We won’t solve the manpower crunch anytime soon. But by returning to the fundamentals of the industry – a service for the people, by people – we will go far in ensuring it continues to thrive.

The writer is CEO of Income Insurance Limited.