Ohio Agents Say Retirees, Generation Y Make Industry Recruitment Critical

The Professional Insurance Agents Association of Ohio, Inc. (PIA) held a symposium on Wednesday, April 30 to gather academic, insurance industry and government leaders from around the state to discuss retaining professional talent for Ohio’s insurance industry.

Attending leaders included Ohio Department of Insurance Director Mary Jo Hudson, CEOs of several Ohio insurance companies and academic leaders from universities and related organizations throughout Ohio.

“As the state’s fourth largest industry, insurance plays a critical role in the overall economic vitality of Ohio,” said Terry Kelso, PIA president. “PIA felt it was time to bring together voices from all sectors and offer a platform where we can discuss our shared challenges of looming staffing shortages and perpetuation concerns.”

The PIA Symposium, The Future of the Insurance Industry: Staffing and Perpetuation, included presentations about baby boomer retirement trends that will affect every corner of the industry within a few years. The agenda highlighted two programs PIA offers to help foster growth within the independent insurance agency system.

According to the PIA the goal of including leaders from all sectors of the industry was to open a dialogue about how various organizations can work together to find more collaborative solutions for the entire industry.

Guest presenter Mitch Wilson, vice president of public information and education for the Ohio Insurance Institute, discussed the insurance industry’s impact on Ohio’s economy.

“The insurance industry employs more than 106,000 Ohioans, not counting self-employed agents, and contributes nearly one million dollars per day in state tax revenue,” Wilson said. “With insurance also paying out $5.6 billion annually in wages, our ability to find and retain key personnel to keep our industry thriving directly parallels Ohio’s overall need to create a more robust economic future.”

Industry experts said that finding professional talent looms increasingly important as the insurance industry faces hundreds of baby boomer retirements and a relatively low level of awareness of career opportunities among college students.

Representatives from Deloitte Consulting presented on how workforce and population trends, as well as generational expectations and the changing nature of work, will also affect the insurance industry’s ability to stay competitive or fall behind the economic curve.

“The challenge is about more than retirees leaving open positions behind, the changing demands of the new workforce of 75 million Generation Y employees create a critical need for competent talent management,” said Andy Liakopoulos, of Deloitte Consulting. “Manage talent well and your business will succeed. But manage it poorly, and you will watch your competition win.”

Symposium attendees agreed that meeting the challenge for the industry not only affects all sectors of the industry, but that it also requires collaborative participation from industry, government and academia to really make a difference.

“We’re faced with increasing numbers of positions available and decreasing college education opportunities in insurance-related fields. Add that to workforce and generational trends, and you get a recipe of necessity for our entire industry to work together toward a big picture strategy,” said Dan Snouffer, PIA director of company and industry relations.

PIA began plans to form a task force among leaders attending to continue investigating demands and solutions for the industry’s human resources needs.

“Our goal is to continue the dialogue and keep a cross-industry team of dedicated leaders at the table,” said Snouffer. “Our ambition is that the team will create solutions to help grow Ohio’s insurance industry now and into the future.”

Source: Professional Insurance Agents Association of Ohio