Aventum Group signs Destination Insurance charter to help attract talent to the industry

Aventum Group signed the Insurance Times Destination Insurance charter at this year’s Biba Conference, with marketing director Matt Field calling on the insurance sector to move beyond talking about the talent crisis and focus instead on practical action.

The Destination Charter was launched to encourage firms across the insurance sector to help attract and retain talent, as well as improve awareness of careers in the market.

Speaking to Insurance Times after signing the charter, Field said the initiative strongly aligned with Aventum’s own approach to talent attraction, development and culture.

He said: “I think for us, everything that you guys are doing is very much aligned with our own thinking on talent and so not just thinking, but action.”

Field pointed to growing concerns around the ageing workforce as one of the biggest challenges facing the sector.

“The one that resonates most highly with me is that I think the average age of the London market insurance workforce will be 46 by 2034,” he said. “That scares me because we’ve got a huge gap to fill.”

However, he argued the issue goes beyond recruitment numbers and stems from how the industry presents itself to younger generations.

“If you asked most 16-year-olds what a career in insurance looks like, they think car, they think home. They don’t see this big world that we’re all part of.”

From signposting to storytelling

Field said insurers need to shift away from promoting rigid career ladders and instead demonstrate the breadth of opportunities available across the market.

“One of the things that the industry definitely needs to do better is almost to stop signposting this very vertical career ladder and start actually bringing it to life,” he explained.

Aventum has sought to tackle this through a new “challenge accepted” employer brand campaign, developed following discussions with both emerging talent and long-standing employees.

Field said: “They all came up with kind of the same thing – it’s really challenging, but it’s amazing fun.”

The broker is also increasingly focused on using social media and short-form content to engage younger audiences.

“They’re not on LinkedIn,” he said. “They’re on Instagram, they’re on TikTok. We’ve got to start moving in that direction, not just in terms of where we show up, but also how we show up.”

Field added that younger audiences want authentic, human-led stories rather than traditional corporate messaging.

“They don’t want to read a benefits booklet anymore. They want to see what does a real career look like and how does that actually feel?”

Building a talent pipeline

Field outlined several initiatives already underway at Aventum to support the group’s long-term talent strategy, including partnerships with schools and charities, work experience programmes and paid internships.

The business has partnered with education charity The Switch for the past two years, bringing children from disadvantaged backgrounds into its London office and introducing them to the workplace.

“We had 16 12 to 13-year-olds in the office last week,” Field said. “A lot of them had never been in central London before.”

Students are taken through mock interviews, workplace workshops and shadowing opportunities designed to provide practical employability skills.

“Day one, we take them through a proper induction. Day two, we take them through a workshop on what our values look like in real life,” he explained.

Alongside this, Aventum launched a paid internship programme last year, with interns starting on salaries of £28,000.

“We catch them at 12 or 13, we then work with them beyond that. Then we’ve got an opportunity to follow them all the way through,” he said.

The firm has also expanded its internal talent strategy, introducing a new employee-led performance management framework and mapping staff across a talent matrix to identify future leaders and development opportunities.

From ‘fallen’ to ‘chosen’

Field also highlighted the range of careers available within insurance, drawing on his own experience of moving from sales into marketing at Aventum.

He said: “I’ve made a huge pivot from what would have been a swim lane going down the sales route that stepped across into marketing.

“It’s a great example then for some of the younger talent to say, you might join as an actuary, but actually you might end up in tech, or you might end up in claims.”

Aventum has grown from around 30 to 40 employees when Field joined nearly a decade ago to 576 staff today, including around 120 employees focused on technology as part of the group’s in house tech programme.

Field warned that insurance faces growing competition for digitally fluent talent from technology and fintech firms.

“It’s not just a case of open the doors and they will come,” he said. “The top talent has got a lot of choice there.”

Despite the challenge, he remained optimistic about the future of insurance careers and the industry’s ability to change perceptions.

“We all joke in the industry that everyone says they fell into it,” he said. “But really that narratives got to change, let’s hope that changes from fallen to chosen.”

Those interested in signing the Insurance Times Destination Charter can find more information here.