Chief executive warns insurance sector not to overlook experience amid young talent push

New MGA Lumara’s chief executive David Aslin has warned the insurance sector against overlooking experienced professionals amid its push to attract younger talent into the market. 

Speaking to Insurance Times, Aslin said the industry risked losing decades of underwriting and broker expertise if it failed to keep long-serving employees engaged.

“Let’s not lose sight of those that have been around for 20 years, 30 years,” he said. “Because they’re the ones that are going to help nurture the people coming through.”

Aslin, who co-founded Lumara along with Mark Greig in November last year, believes experienced professionals are becoming increasingly disengaged in process-heavy environments that leave little room for relationship building or creativity.

He said: “If you just make them disillusioned, or you don’t use them for the skills that they’ve learned, they might and some already have left the industry because they just got bored with it.”

The MGA currently operates with a core team of five, supported by wider back office infrastructure, and has built regional expertise into its structure with staff focused across Yorkshire, the Midlands, the south east, East Anglia and the south west.

Aslin said maintaining strong communication between teams and brokers was central to the business’ culture.

“We’re talking all the time,” he said. “We know where the brokers are, we know what’s going on in the market.”

Knowledge transfer

Although Lumara marks Aslin’s first chief executive role, he said transparency and openness would underpin the culture he wants to create as the business grows.

“You can get the best out of people if you’ve got people that really want to do the best,” he said. “They’ve got a passion. They want to do more.”

As technology and automation continue to reshape underwriting roles, Aslin argued that retaining experienced staff would become even more important for the sector’s long-term development.

“We’ve got to think about, how do we keep those people here?” he said. “How do we then tap into their knowledge and experience, to help everybody else coming through?”