The insurance sector is experiencing a shortage of industry specific accounting skills pushing bonus payemnets up by 100%, according to financial services recruitment consultancy Robert Half Financial Services Group.
The insurance sector is experiencing a shortage of industry specific accounting skills pushing bonus payements up by 100%, according to financial services recruitment consultancy Robert Half Financial Services Group.
"Insurance continues to be a growing sector and within certain job functions the demand for specifically skilled labour is extremely high", said regional manager David Jones.
"There is a huge lack of syndicate accounting specialists and therefore qualified accountants with this type of technical expertise can command very good salaries. Similarly, compliance specialists are in very short supply -especially since the FSA took over as the regulatory body leaving not as many candidates with both FSA and insurance sector experience. Finally, IBA experience at the process end is also in short supply and we can always place people with this sort of background."
Salaries in the sector are moving closer to the sorts of packages that are offered in other areas of financial services and the bonus element is becoming more significant. "Historically, bonuses of 5-10% were common-place" says Jones, "however, today we can see bonuses of up to 25/30%."
The general hardening of the market in the insurance sector seems to be having a knock on effect within the recruitment industry too: "Premium incomes are rising rapidly - in some areas ten fold and so recruitment in the sector is very buoyant", says Jones." As a consequence, we are recruiting internally for more insurance recruitment consultants."
