The P&C industry is painting itself into a corner. While innovative technological solutions offer the promise of both greater effectiveness and greater efficiency—in areas ranging from claims processing to client billing—these solutions are dependent upon a continuing inflow of highly skilled talent.

Yet the industry is losing, rather than gaining talent. Recently, Peter L. Miller, president and CEO of The Institutes (formerly known as the AICPU), reported the number of employees age 55 and over is 30 percent higher in the P&C industry than in any other industry. With so many retirements looming, insurers will need to fill as many as 400,000 positions by 2020.

Few would say, however, that the industry has positioned itself as an exciting or attractive place for recent college graduates to work. Although P&C companies suffered less through the economic crisis than their banking or capital markets counterparts, the industry does not exert much pull on Millennials or on their younger siblings and cousins. Memorably, a 2011 Wall Street Journal survey ranked insurance 97th out of 100 industries in terms of its attractiveness as a career for young people.