eFinancialCareers

Offers stable careers and less competition for jobs.

Think of insurance and the first thing that may spring to mind is waiting on hold for a quote for insuring your car or your holiday. But the insurance industry is about far more than just car insurance or hanging on at call centres.

Insurance is big business. In 2005, according to the most recent figures available from insurer Swiss Re, global insurance premiums were worth more than US$3.4 trillion (£1.7 trillion), with the UK worth £166.7bn, according to the UK Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). This is hardly surprising, given that – alongside personal insurance for cars, homes and holidays – insurance companies cover commercial risks on everything from industrial buildings to power stations and ocean liners.

The insurance industry can be split into three sectors:

• Insurers: the companies that provide the insurance packages.
• Reinsurers: companies that insure the insurers.
• Brokers: companies that sell packages on behalf of insurers.

Whether you work for an insurer, a reinsurer or a broker, a career in the City will put you at the more exciting end of the insurance spectrum. The London insurance market centres on international projects and big commercial clients and provides cover to a diverse range of risks – from North Sea oil platforms to celebrities insuring their body parts. What this means is that you could be designing anything from a risk management and insurance programme for a big international company such as British Airways right down to working with small start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Trends

Thanks to global warming and international terrorism, we live in risky times. But while the insurance industry has good reason to be concerned about potential claims arising from another September 11th or Hurricane Katrina, most of its business is a lot lower key. The last time the Association of British Insurers (ABI) counted (back in 2005), the UK's general insurance industry (not counting the huge life insurance and pensions sector) faced a total £20.6bn in claims, of which nearly 40% related to motor vehicles. While events such as 2007's severe flooding in England may make the headlines, insurers are equally likely to be kept awake by trends in motor vehicle vandalism.

UK insurers are also vexed by problems attracting staff. In 2005, the CII commissioned Cass Business School to conduct a study into students' attitudes to insurance careers: 90% said they wouldn't go into the industry.

Since then, insurance has gone all-out to make itself appear alluring to university leavers. "Insurance just hasn't been seen as sexy," says Alex Thompson, a spokeswoman for the ABI. "It's seen as men in grey suits doing paperwork."

You can see insurers' new image at www.insurancecareers.cii.co.uk.

Key players

Think of the London insurance market and the first name that springs to mind is likely to be Lloyd's. But Lloyd's isn't an insurance company – it's a market made up of member companies, specialising in property and catastrophe insurance. By comparison, most of the UK's biggest insurers operate in the huge area of life insurance and pensions – Aviva International is the top provider of life and pensions products in Europe.

Roles and career paths

Apart from the usual operations functions such as human resources, finance and information technology, insurance offers a number of specialist careers.

These specialist careers include underwriting, broking, actuarial roles and risk assessment.

Underwriting is the job most typically associated with the insurance industry. These are the people who look at risks and price them for insurance purposes. So, if you're a driver with a history of crashes it will be the job of an underwriter to charge you more for your car insurance.

Like the broking companies they work for, it's the job of individual insurance brokers to sell insurance to clients. Actuaries analyse the financial consequences of risks the insurance company is taking and ask questions such as whether the company has enough reserves to cover future payouts. Risk managers work with the insurers' clients to help make payouts less likely.

In the past it was common to specialise in one of the above areas, but industry insiders says it's becoming easier to move between roles. In particular, companies such as Allianz and Axa run trainee programmes in which you will be given exposure to various roles.

Allianz runs seven different graduate training schemes, taking on around 30 graduates a year, with about 10 going into the management programme, says graduate development manager Debbie Crew.

Axa, meanwhile, runs three graduate programmes: an actuarial training programme that takes on between six and eight graduates, a leadership programme with places for about 23 graduates and an IT programme for 20 graduates.

Skills

"We are looking for people that are passionate about insurance and want to learn; we very much look for future potential," says Debbie Crew of Allianz. Among the practical skills required are numeracy, 'emotional agility', drive and ambition.

"To be successful in this industry, you must have the capability to handle lots of information, analyse the data and make accurate decisions from it. You most also be prepared to focus on achieving professional qualifications, normally outside your working hours," Crew adds.

"We are looking for graduates with a 2.2 degree (2.1 for actuarial programme) or above who have excellent interpersonal skills, leadership potential and high levels of energy and drive," says Jasbir Sennitt, Axa UK graduate resourcing manager.