Sian Fisher, CEO, Chartered Insurance Institute
Meeting the professional skills needs of the future
As we live longer, each one of our life stages alters – careers span many jobs, often with spells of part time or self-employment. As more of us are living longer, our needs for care change, which also has an impact on every generation within
a family.
For corporations, intangible assets like intellectual property are becoming far more valuable than physical property; vulnerability to cybercrime has become far more of a threat and for businesses of all sizes, coronavirus has reminded us that the way we respond to historic risks has changed radically – for example, by making all previous economic modelling for pandemics redundant.
This change in people’s lives and the risks faced by organisations puts huge demands on insurers’ ability to communicate effectively with their clients – and this does not just mean cleansing contracts of unnecessary jargon. It means taking a professional approach to understanding customers, designing products and building solutions that go beyond traditional insurance.
The kind of knowledge and skills that lie behind this new professional approach take us away from a lot of the technical knowledge that has traditionally underpinned insurance. It requires us to build up a detailed picture of the risks that individuals and institutions face; it requires us understand how decisions are made in the real world, using disciplines like behavioural economics; finally, it means testing everything we do with customers to understand how we can improve.
Some of these skills can be developed through traditional methods such as training courses and examinations. However, to get the right outcomes for the public, these traditional methods must be part of a more holistic approach to people management – one in which diverse lived experiences are brought to bear on all decisions.
The ability for employers to respond to the need for new skills for its workforce are vital, which is why it was pleasing to see Zurich announce a new £1 million programme for upskilling its employees in 2020. Their analysis³⁵ showed in the long term, upskilling home-grown talent could save the business in recruitment and redundancy costs, but also provide meaningful long-term jobs and new opportunities for its workforce.
Ultimately, nurturing skills is not just about training, it is just as much about choosing the right business model for an organisation and recruiting and retaining as wide a range of people as possible.
Equality, diversity and inclusion are central to building a modern profession and are both a strategic goal and an organisational imperative for the Chartered Insurance Institute. This is not just an opportunity to ensure a safe, fair, and open working environment for staff, but also to ensure the same for our members, and their workplaces.
Alongside the structural measures an organisation can make to be more inclusive and welcoming of people from different backgrounds, or who have different protected characteristics, there is also a real need for skills training and development, as well as core ethical and professional standards competencies that sit at the heart of an effective EDI strategy. This can include developing managerial and leadership-based skills, as well as raising awareness of lived experience and engaging people with their emotional intelligence both for clients and for colleagues.
Our work through thought leadership, our professional standards function, our work with corporate Chartered Firms and the Insuring Futures initiatives have allowed us to bring together the organisational changes required and the skill-based ones too. Added to this is our Code of Ethics³⁶ which sits at the heart of CII
membership, and is not only an outline of rules for compliance, but also serves as a useful tool for us to be able to engage members across a variety of issues within professionalism, especially on how to treat customers and members of staff fairly.
Insuring Women’s Futures, established and led by the Chartered Insurance Institute in collaboration with a wide variety of expert stakeholders, focuses on evolving the insurance and personal finance profession’s approach to women and risk.
Since its inception, it has identified key moments in women’s lives³⁷ that affect their financial health; and suggested actions for individuals, businesses and government/regulators create positive change.³⁸ At the heart of its recommendations is a drive for more women to enter insurance and financial services careers and develop the skills and abilities of those already within the profession, to ensure they can seek the same opportunities as men.
The Cabinet Office-sponsored Access to Insurance Working Group formed in September 2018 seeks to improve access to protection insurance for those with long-term health conditions and disabilities. The CII’s role is to chair the Professionalism workstream and explore how professional standards and guidance can help improve consumer outcomes.
Our work has expanded into creating guidance on building accessible workplaces, with the publication of our ‘Inclusive Workplace’ guide (in collaboration with Scope) in 2019³⁹ and our guidance for ‘Managers of Employees with Autism Spectrum Disorders’ (in collaboration with Aon and WTW) in 2020.⁴⁰ We believe if we encourage more people with disabilities into the profession and retain them, we will better represent and meet the needs of the public.
EDI in the profession
Brexit will shift the way we do business, in the UK, with the EU and the rest of the world. As we look at regulating, setting laws and futureproofing our economy, we need to ensure a strong supply chain of skilled workers is accessible for financial services.
There are already skills gaps within our profession, so we need to ensure as we look to tackle the growing risks and changing nature of work and society itself, we do not overlook the impacts Brexit could have. However, there is also an opportunity to shift our current workforce models and rely more on domestic talent pipelines.
With the new operating relationship with the EU and a new points-based immigration system, we need to ensure we understand the routes skilled and non-skilled workers can use to join our united profession.
Brexit
Scams and fraud are difficult in what are considered ‘normal’ times, but we have seen an unhealthy rise in financial fraud, with those in vulnerable circumstances often the most affected.
One defence against scams is the support and knowledge professionals can offer. When it comes to finances, accredited organisations such as authorised IFAs, brokers, insurers and banks are good places for consumers to go for their needs, avoiding the “too good to be true” offers that honeyed words and persuasive salespeople can mask.
Those who have a chartered designation are not only trustworthy due to their technical knowledge and commitment to lifelong learning, but also the ethical component that comes as a standard part of being an active member of a chartered body. Members sign up to strict code of ethics which put their clients first and hold themselves accountable if things go wrong.
The other added benefit of ensuring business is conducted through professionals are the regulatory protections consumers are given through statutory compensations schemes and direct-action regulators, such as the Financial Conduct Authority, can take if wrongdoing is found.
Despite all this, fraud is committed every day, and whilst the government’s own enforcement activity is an important defence against
this, so is building on the existing skilled professionals. We must increase access to professional advice across financial services and reduce the likelihood of success for those who want to cheat honest consumers.
Rise in misinformation & fraud
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our way of life. Jobs have been lost, household finances obliterated, companies have failed and our government has had to respond by rolling out the highest level of public spending seen in peacetime. Structures which were already under pressure have given way, and questions around meaningful jobs and skills in response to the growing levels of unemployment are more important than ever.
The Chancellor’s recent budget⁴¹ and the OBR forecasts⁴² sitting alongside it can provide us with some cause for optimism, especially as growth is predicted to surge faster than the OBR had previously stated. However, as we rebuild our society, skills need to be at the heart of our response and the government needs to create a long-term strategy for jobs and skills, to face future challenges and demands and build resilience into our economy and our lives.
The role of Chartered bodies should not be underestimated within all of this, and we have long called on government to utilise us and our connections with local communities, training providers, employers and individuals looking for careers and professional development. We are the natural partner to a UK skills strategy, and we continue to engage with government to make that case.
Covid-19
The Chartered Insurance Institute is engaged with several market initiatives focused on developing talent pipelines and filling skills gaps. Two of the most immediate are:
• The Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC) launched in 2020⁴³ following the Financial Services Skills Taskforce report and recommendations; and
• The City of London’s Socio-Economic Task Force set up to build a business case for greater socio-economic diversity and examine ways to incentivise action within financial services.
Apprenticeships are a strategic part of the CII’s professional offering, as they are a solid route into a career in insurance and/or personal finance. Our Aspire programme⁴⁴, launched in 2017, has seen more than 500 registered firms sign up to a programme which offers structured training to apprentices so that they can achieve the necessary qualifications and skills. We were particularly pleased to see more than 1,500 apprentices enrolled in the insurance and personal finance profession in 2018/19.⁴⁵
As the professional body for insurance and personal finance, we take skills and professional development seriously. We continue to work with employer groups, learning providers and the government to ensure we not only support the needs of those already working within the market, but also unlock routes for people to upskill and reskill at different points in their life.
This will be the secret to maintaining a competitive and innovative marketplace and ensuring it is modern and diverse, reflecting the society and the consumers it serves.
Skills initiatives/collaborations
Insurance is about protecting people and organisations from risk – but that risk has changed out of all recognition in recent decades.
35 Zurich (2020), Zurich sets out to future-proof 3,000 UK workers with £1m upskilling programme
36 Chartered Insurance Institute (2017), Code of Ethics
37 Chartered Insurance Institute (2018), Securing the financial future of the next generation
38 Chartered Insurance Institute (2020), Insuring Women’s Futures’ Manifesto: The full report
39 Chartered Insurance Institute (2019), Achieving an inclusive working environment for disabled people
40 Chartered Insurance Institute, Aon & Willis Towers Watson (2020), Manager guidance: supporting employees with autism spectrum disorders
41 HM Treasury (2021), UK Budget 2021
42 Office for Budget Responsibility (2021), Economic and fiscal outlook
43 For more information, see Financial Services Skills Commission
44 For more information, see the Chartered Insurance Institute’s Aspire Programme
45 Department for Education (2020), Apprenticeships and traineeships data