Talent attraction and retention is the top priority for UK insurance brokers in 2026, ahead of artificial intelligence, emerging risks, and regulatory compliance. That is the headline finding of a survey conducted at the BIBA conference in May 2026.
The poll asked 92 brokers to name their single most pressing concern. Forty per cent ranked talent first. AI and automation adoption came second at 24%, followed by emerging risks and protection gaps at 21%. Navigating regulation and compliance was top for the remaining 15%.
The survey was carried out by MGA capital partner Mission. It was conducted at the British Insurance Brokers' Association annual conference, the UK sector's largest broker gathering.
Source: BIBA, Mission
The finding is not confined to the Mission survey. Gallagher Bassett's Carrier Perspective 2026 report found talent attraction and retention had risen from seventh place to become the top business challenge for UK insurers.
The report drew on a broader industry survey. Seventy-two per cent of UK respondents reported greater difficulty finding qualified candidates. Almost half (48%) cited acute shortages in claims management and adjusting.
Tom Hill, chief commercial officer of Mission, said the findings reflected what the firm was hearing across the market.
"While AI is rightly high on the agenda, brokers recognise that its value ultimately depends on the people using it," Hill said. "Specialist expertise, trusted relationships and entrepreneurial leadership remain the foundations of a successful insurance business."
The scale of the recruitment challenge helps explain why talent consistently outranks other priorities. Aviva's Broker Barometer found 72% of UK brokers are actively hiring. Around half (45%) said recruitment needs had grown over the past year.
Graduate vacancies across the sector also fell 18% in 2025. Only 4% of young people express interest in an insurance career, per the Chartered Insurance Institute. 87% of brokers cite succession planning as their primary reason for prioritising younger talent.
The talent problem runs deeper than short-term hiring conditions. Academics at the University of Warwick, LSE, and Oxford studied junior insurance hiring across four countries. Their research found UK hiring fell roughly 10 percentage points below the 2019 baseline by 2025, the steepest decline of any country studied.
More than one quarter of UK insurance staff are already over 50. The London Market Group found the over-50s and under-30s now hold roughly equal shares of the talent pool. That points to a dangerously shallow bench of emerging leaders.
The 16-percentage-point gap between talent (40%) and AI (24%) in the Mission survey tells a clear story. Brokers appear to view technology as dependent on the human capacity that precedes it, not as a substitute for it.
That reading aligns with what senior market figures have argued at recent industry events. Brokers broadly accept that AI will reshape workflows. The question they are now asking is whether they have the people to make it work.
