Jacobson Sees Big Increase in Life and Health Hiring Plans

What You Need to Know

Life and health insurers are hungrier than other insurers for actuaries.
They have less interest in expanding claims staffs.
Demand for compliance employees may be moderate, but stronger than at other types of insurers.

U.S. life and health insurers have been doing well enough in recent months to go out hiring.

They plan to expand employment by 1.69% over the next 12 months, according to analysts at the Jacobson Group and Aon’s Ward unit.

About 65% of the insurers that participated in a labor market survey predicted that they will increase their number of workers in the coming year.

In January 2021, only 43% of those insurers thought they could do well enough in the COVID-19 era to expand. But by December, 48% of the insurers had expanded. Only 19% had cut the number of employees.

The Survey

Jacobson is a Chicago-based firm that helps companies in the insurance industry with hiring.

Ward is a company that compiles performance comparison data for companies in the insurance industry.

The firms base their quarterly and annual insurance sector data on a voluntary employer survey.

The Jobs

The survey team has participants rate the likelihood of increasing the number of certain types of employees using a scale of 1 to 8, with 8 representing a 100% likelihood of increasing the number of staff.

Life, health and annuity issuers said they were very likely to expand their technology teams: They gave the likelihood of expanding technology teams a rating over 7.

Other functions with ratings between 5 and 6 include sales and marketing, actuarial, operations analytics and product management.

Functions where life, health and annuity issuers seemed much hungrier for workers than property and casualty insurers include product management, operations and analytics.

Life, health and annuity issuers also gave claims staff hiring a rating close to 5, but they were less interested in expanding claim teams than the P&C insurers. They assigned accounting hiring and compliance hiring a rating of only about 4.