Insurance sector employers must diversify their workforce to be considered a viable career option for younger generations, experts say.
“There is a lot of talk about DEI, but we don’t always see the action that is necessary to move the needle forward,” said Grace Grant, executive director of Powell, Ohio-based Gamma Iota Sigma, a nonprofit student organization that collaborates with the insurance industry.
“Gamma Sigma has always taken diversity very seriously and has been in a unique position to observe how the industry is approaching it,” she said.
The organization is active at historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, women’s schools and community colleges.
Some employers are equally as focused on diversity in their hiring strategies, experts say.
“We’re entirely focused on equitable gender representation among our workforce,” said Afiong Ekong, an HR director with Atlanta-based Crawford & Co.
Crawford uses platforms such as Circa, a diversity recruitment and HR compliance technology company, and it shares career opportunities on job websites catering to veterans, disabled workers, minorities and women. The company also has an internal employee resource program focused on promoting “the professional growth and empowerment of women,” which helps with employee retention, Ms. Ekong said.
Company figures show that in 2023, women held 24.1% of senior-level roles and 27.5% of executive positions at Crawford. Women comprise 56.8% of its global workforce.
“We leverage all of the opportunities we can to focus on women,” Ms. Ekong said.
While female representation has risen in the insurance industry, there’s still a concern that too few women serve in higher-paid leadership roles and that pay discrepancies between genders continue.
In March, the Insurance Information Institute reported that while women comprise 80% of claims and clerical roles, they only comprise 22% of executive-level positions.
Companies also are focusing on other underrepresented communities.
“We want to move the needle in a meaningful and impactful way,” said Lilian Vanvieldt, executive vice president, chief diversity and inclusion officer, for Alliant Insurance Services Inc. in San Diego.
She recalled her own plans to enter the field of financial planning after leaving college and how she encountered difficulties in finding companies in the sector willing to hire someone who was both Black and female.
Ms. Vanvieldt ultimately landed an insurance internship and learned about different roles within the industry. She soon learned, however, that many Black women were only offered claims positions.
“Within the rest of the offices — underwriting, sales — they (were) all white males,” Ms. Vanvieldt recalled.
A hiring strategy that remains common in the industry — relying heavily on employee referrals — won’t help with diversification, and companies should expand their outreach to minorities and first-generation students, experts say.
Some companies have broadened their recruitment efforts by partnering with historically Black colleges and universities.
Liberty Mutual, for example, provides internships to students attending Messina College at Boston College’s Brookline, Massachusetts, campus, which has an associate’s degree program designed for first-generation students.
Today, there’s greater recruitment focus on diversity than in prior years, experts say.
“You will be left in the dust if you are not focusing on DEI, especially with the generation of students who are graduating from college now and will be graduating,” said Jessie Walsh, vice president for talent acquisition at brokerage Conner Strong & Buckelew in Camden, New Jersey. “Diversity, equity and inclusion accessibility programs have been taught to these people since they were in grade school.”
Ms. Walsh said her company has increased its diversity hiring “year over year.”
At Liberty Mutual, a 2023 report showed demographic shifts at the insurer. Black employees represented 8.6% of the workforce in 2019 and 11% in 2023. Women made up 53% of the workforce in 2019 and 54.7% last year.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Black employees comprised 13.2% of the insurance industry workforce in 2021, while women comprised 58.9%.
While M3 Insurance Solutions Inc. doesn’t specifically partner with HBCUs, it has engaged in diverse hiring. M3’s 2023 internship class comprised 23% minorities, said Jake Cline, talent acquisition manager.
