Much has been made of the graying of the insurance business, but Alan Jay
Kaufman, president and CEO of
Kaufman Financial, the parent company of Burns & Wilcox and numerous other insurance businesses, has been doing something about it.
He and his wife endowed a professorship at Michigan State University and he has established several programs at Kaufman to recruit and train young insurance professionals.
“As every year goes by, I notice that there is a lack of talent. More people, all through the industry, are retiring. Baby boomers are retiring. There are more people leaving than coming in, but business is growing,” he said.
“Insurance is expanding across the board, all lines, all distribution channels. Insurance is expanding as in industry, but there is a shortage of talent. I see the problem intensifying every year,” Kaufman said.
As if it wasn’t bad enough for a growing industry to face a shortage of incoming talent, he said the problem is worsened by companies raiding each other for what talent there is.
“There is a lack of collegiality so to speak with everyone taking people from everyone else, which is not healthy. Years ago, that was unknown; people didn’t take people from each other. Insurance companies didn’t take people from brokers. And brokers were collegiate with each other and you didn’t find that. But through the years that has been magnified greatly since there is a shortage of talent at all levels, from assistant underwriters all the way up. There is such a big need and there is nothing being done about it in a big enough way. There are People putting their fingers in the dike so to speak, but that’s it,” he said.
Most of the people in the insurance business today ended up there by happenstance, he said, more than by intention. He said he thinks there needs to be more of an industry wide push to recruit and educate young people for careers in insurance.
