Here's What Life and Health Insurers Plan to Do to Their Sales and Marketing Teams

By Allison Bell

News February 22, 2019 at 01:06 PM

Share & Print

U.S. life and health insurers may be hungry for tech talent, but they're starved for sales and marketing talent.

Analysts from the Jacobson Group and Aon have released data supporting that conclusion in summaries of results from a 2019 U.S. insurance labor market survey.

The number of insurers in the sample was not immediately available, but the average participating company had more than 2,000 employees, according to a survey slidedeck.

The participating life and health insurers ended up hiring more people in 2018 than they expected.

A year ago, 53% of the life and health companies said they thought they would increase staffing in 2018. Instead, 65% increased staffing levels.

This year, 65% of the life and health insurers said they expect to increase staffing levels in the coming year. Just 10% said they expect to cut staffing levels.

When the survey team asked life and health insurers to rate staff expansion likelihood for various types of employees, on a scale running from 1, or least likely, up to 8, technology staffers received a "plan to expand" rating a little over 7.

Sales and marketing staffers received a staffing expansion rating of about 7.5.

General operations came in third, with a staffing expansion rating of about 6.

Accounting, product management and actuarial clustered near the bottom, with staffing expansion ratings ranging from 4 to 5.