Australia’s insurance sector is confronting a deepening skills shortage while AI simultaneously raises the bar for what entry-level work requires. Suncorp Group’s restructured 2027 Graduate and Internship Program is one visible response – but the market conditions driving it affect every insurer and every broker whose clients depend on insurer workforces to handle claims, underwriting, and service delivery.
Talent attraction and retention ranked as the third-highest business challenge facing Australian insurers in 2026, behind premium affordability and insurability and data and cybersecurity, according to Gallagher Bassett’s The Carrier Perspective: 2026 Claims Insights. The structural dimension extends well beyond current hiring cycles. The Future Skills Organisation’s (FSO) Workforce Plan 2025 projects that by 2030, attrition will impact over 613,000 roles across Australia’s finance, technology, and business sectors – outpacing new supply from education, migration, and job transitions. For insurance specifically, the FSO has identified pressing challenges including digital capability gaps and an ageing workforce, with digital transformation and regulatory reform reshaping work across claims, underwriting, distribution, and risk. In direct response, 68% of Australian insurers said they are increasing investment in training and development in 2026 – up sharply from 48% in 2025, according to the same Gallagher Bassett data.
The talent shortage is compounded by a structural shift in what graduate roles actually require. PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analysed more than one billion job advertisements, found AI is creating a two-track labour market: “professionalised” roles, where AI automates routine tasks while increasing the importance of human expertise and judgement, are growing twice as fast as “democratised” roles, and have recorded 42% faster salary growth since 2021.
The most AI-exposed junior roles are now seven times more likely to require skills typically expected of senior workers, according to the PwC barometer. The traditional model – where graduates learned the industry through repetitive, process-driven tasks – is being eroded by the same automation reshaping claims and underwriting operations. In Australia, AI-skilled job postings doubled from 20,000 in 2024 to 41,000 in 2025, and AI-skilled workers now command an average wage premium of 62%, up from 57% the prior year, with financial services among the industries offering the highest premiums, according to PwC Australia’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer.
Suncorp graduate talent lead Kelly Pfeffer, who has overseen the company’s program for more than a decade, framed the implications directly. “We’re in a really exciting time where AI is reshaping the graduate job market and providing early career professionals with opportunities never seen before. The skills required for graduates today are about knowing how to work alongside AI and apply human skills of communication, adaptability, and critical thinking,” Pfeffer said.
The structural change in Suncorp’s 2027 program is a move away from role-specific applications. Candidates now apply by study discipline, with Suncorp then working to match them to available positions – a reversal of the conventional model in which applicants self-select into predefined roles at the outset. “We’re in the era of portfolio careers – where people are gathering skills rather than job titles. So instead of asking candidates to choose a specific role at the start, we’re inviting them to apply by discipline and then working with them to identify opportunities that align with their skills and aspirations,” Pfeffer said.
The approach is not universal among major Australian insurers. IAG’s 2027 Graduate Program retains a stream-specific structure, with candidates able to apply to multiple streams but required to complete a separate application and assessment process for each, including business operations, customer experience & growth, and data & analytics. QBE’s Australian Graduate Program also uses predefined streams, including underwriting, business, claims, consumer, and risk, with graduate roles advertised as they open. Suncorp’s discipline-first model aligns with a documented shift in how financial services organisations approach talent identification. ADP’s 2025 HR Trends Guide found that 90% of organisations using a skills-based hiring method report reducing their mis-hires, and 94% agree that skills-based hiring is more predictive of on-the-job success than resumes.
The talent pipeline question carries direct implications for insurance brokers. The National Insurance Brokers Association’s (NIBA) June 2026 research report, Data to Direction: Insights from the General Insurance Broking Profession, found that brokers aged 18 to 29 represent the same share of the profession as those aged 60 and over – both at 11% – with the two largest cohorts being brokers aged 40 to 49 at 31% and 30 to 39 at 28%, and a workforce median age of 44. NIBA CEO Richard Klipin cited that data as the basis for a new early-career track the association is introducing at its October 2026 convention – the first in the event’s history. “There is an opportunity to grow the pipeline of brokers aged 18 to 29. We’re delighted to invest in a curated pathway for the next generation to connect, learn, and grow,” Klipin said.
The same shallow pipeline dynamic applies on the insurer side. NIBA’s February 2026 consumer research report, Complexity to Clarity: The Broker Advantage, found that 95% of clients view brokers as critical to claims resolution and 98% report their claims have been successfully resolved – a service proposition that depends in part on the capability and continuity of the insurer workforces brokers navigate on behalf of their clients. Insurers investing in structured graduate pipelines are responding to a real supply problem with long-term consequences for the intermediated market. Whether the discipline-based matching model delivers measurably better retention outcomes than stream-specific hiring remains to be demonstrated, but the industry conditions making that experiment necessary are already documented.
Applications for Suncorp’s 2027 Graduate and Internship Program are open across three waves: technology internships from August 4, technology graduate roles from August 11, and remaining graduate roles from August 18. The two-year program commences January 28, 2027, across Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland. Technology and Operations internships run from November to February on a casual basis across Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
