Destination Insurance: Future-proofing talent starts with tackling retention

With fierce competition between industries and insurance firms rushing to upskill and reskill talent, it is worth “recognising the challenges that could potentially bring for the for the profession”.

This is according to Adam Harper, executive director of strategy, advocacy and professional standards at the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), who was speaking during a webinar on 21 October 2025 entitled ‘The Destination Insurance charter: Improving talent pipelines in UKGI and the London market’.

The online session – available on demand here – was hosted by Insurance Times and sponsored by the CII, as well as by insurers HDI Global and Zurich.

Panelists discussed how the industry can collectively improve the talent pipeline to mark the launch of the Destination Insurance Charter.

During the conversation, which was chaired by Insurance Times editor Katie Scott, Harper explained that developing technical and behavioural skills was integral to future-proofing UKGI in terms of talent.

For example, emerging trends he listed included harnessing artificial intelligence (AI), software development and promoting empathy and skills around customer service.

However, he noted that “by virtue of the transferability of those skills, it brings a different challenge to our table, which is how do we hold on to that talent?”

“Because they can just as well take that and grow within the profession as they can then take those skills into other sectors,” he continued.

“That’s an important dimension that we mustn’t lose sight of, as well as recognising [technology-driven] emerging roles and providing the scope and frameworks for individuals to develop their skills accordingly.”

Contending with changing expectations

Labelling her own opinion “controversial”, fellow panellist Gemma McWilliam, chief people officer at HDI Global UK and Ireland, said that there was a “need to recognise” that the industry cannot retain everyone.

She explained that there needs to be an openness around individuals developing a particular skillset in one company or industry, with the next opportunity for them being elsewhere.

However, she added that if they remain in the industry and are able to “go and develop those skills elsewhere, the industry is still small and we potentially see those individuals coming back”.

In agreement, Steve Collinson, chief human resources officer at Zurich, said he believes that the one thing the industry has not done enough of is “outternships”.

Using the phrase as a play on internships, he explained that the outternship concept stresses that mobility between different stakeholders and businesses can help broaden skills and perspectives across the market.

What can the industry do?

Addressing the general retention challenge within the sector, McWilliams explained that a younger demographic in the industry, in combination with expectations changing around career progression, were part of the cause.

This is, however, not a lost cause, as she added “there are, of course, things that we can do” to mitigate the problems.

For example, McWilliams noted that offering more development programmes where individuals are given exposure to working on business challenges not necessarily seen in their day-to-day role would allow for building and utilising those skills and experiences.

She added: “It’s around individuals understanding the different ways that your career can develop in a particular business.

“It isn’t always about lateral promotion, but it’s the breadth of different experience that you can have to build your own personal career toolkit.”

For Collinson, the retention challenge all boils down to a lack of quality evaluations of overall employee propositions in the industry.

He noted that this can be seen from the norm that companies spend vast amounts of time thinking “really deeply” about their “offering, the products and services” and the retention of customers.

But, Collinson added, the question often left on the wayside is “do we do the same for our employee offering?”