The 2018 Insurance Industry Employment and Hiring Outlook Survey by GreatInsuranceJobs.com reveals a trend for record hiring in the insurance industry, but a slew of challenges insurance employers are facing to fill jobs like underwriters, actuaries, claims, account managers and sales.

Difficult to find experienced talent

“Insurance employers were very clear this year. They are having a difficult time finding experienced talent not only to keep up with new job requisitions but to replace retirees and short-term millennial workers who are only staying 12-18 months,” states Scott Kotroba, president and co-founder of GreatInsuranceJobs.com. “With record employment and a huge push for younger workers, talent acquisition in the insurance industry is being forced to change strategies so they can connect their message to this group.”

Key findings

The key findings from the 2018 Insurance Industry Employment and Hiring Outlook Survey include:

• More than 13,300 more jobs will come open in the last three quarters of this year.
• 36% of surveyed companies are forecasting better hiring in 2018 than 2017.
• 95% of companies currently have open jobs.
• The top five top positions insurance companies are looking to fill are sales, underwriting, customer service/administration, technology and claims.
• The top hiring challenges include lack of skilled talent, uncompetitive salaries and small recruiting budgets.
• New technologies like artificial intelligence, chatbots and programmatic ad buying are still not being utilized by surveyed employers.
• The retiring insurance population is an issue again and will be for years.
• Robots have not replaced too many insurance professionals yet. The industry has record employment.

Not using new recruiting technology

“One of the biggest things is the fact that employers stated recruiting strategies have not changed since the recession,” explains co-founder Roger Lear. “For most, this leaves them in the dust to companies who can get a targeted recruiting message delivered on multiple platforms. Most of our surveyed employers have not even considered new recruiting technology yet.”

This survey also asks employers directly how they would recruit more people to an industry that is losing employees to retirement.

Phone interviews with 64 insurance entities

The findings of the report are based on phone interviews with 64 insurance entities employing a total of 323,377 employees, which represents 12.4% of the total insurance industry workforce.

Related: Get real when training new insurance agency staff