The War for Talent Is Over, and Talent Won

Jay D’Aprile is an Executive Vice President at Slayton Search Partners with more than 20 years in retained executive search, focused on senior management roles in the life, health and property-casualty insurance industry as well as integrated health care systems, hospitals and academic medical centers. He began his own career as a life, health and P&C insurance agent. Gilad noted he isn’t an agent, underwriter or insurtech founder, but one of the people who make sure insurers operate by bringing in the right talent.

About Jay D’Aprile

Jay D’Aprile is the insurance practice leader at Slayton Search Partners, advising insurance carriers on executive hiring.

How the Industry Fared in 2020

Jay said the legacy carriers he works with across life, health and P&C pivoted well. All have remote workforces, with productivity as strong as before, and business as good as it has always been. He hasn’t seen the large layoffs of 2008 among the overwhelming majority of incumbents; a few large carriers are changing their business models and adjusting workforces, but most changes are driven by innovation and the new skill sets that digital competition requires.

He gave credit to two functions that had to turn on a dime when workforces went fully remote: human resources and IT. Companies are now working out what their post-pandemic model looks like: everyone back to the office, only some employees, or virtual first. He mentioned a friend who is CEO of a health insurer and recently joined the board of DocuSign, which announced it was going virtual-first, letting employees work from anywhere, and said we’re in the first inning of figuring out corporate culture in a fully virtual setting.

Distribution and Executive Brand Have to Change

Jay has traveled four days a week for 25 years as a retained search consultant, and realized a couple of years earlier that digital had to be figured out. He gave an example from distribution: when he was considering a whole life policy, an agent from one of the top ten insurers came to his kitchen table three or four times with a pitch book, the same technology agents used when Jay sold insurance 25 years earlier. The old model is changing, he said, and incumbents are only beginning to wrestle with how to support distribution when the ways of selling are changing.

His advice to the C-level insurance executives he speaks with constantly: understand personal branding and become visible, because executives have to figure out digital for themselves just as companies do. He built his own digital profile, which let him double his business in the prior year, and noted that if you had told him in March 2020 he’d be this busy during a pandemic he would have laughed. He said you either adapt or you die.

Who Insurers Need to Hire Now

Executives call Jay regularly asking how to win the war for talent. The profile has shifted: alongside traditional underwriting, claims, finance and actuarial roles, insurers now need leaders who understand AI, machine learning, digital and direct-to-consumer, a skill set that quite frankly doesn’t exist inside the industry today. That means going outside insurance, to adjacent financial services, insurtechs and consumer, retail and online companies.

He works at the C-level and one or two levels below, typically for roles paying at least $500,000 to $600,000 and up to $3 to $5 million, so he is recruiting the leaders of those functions, not directors. That talent is expensive, in demand and doesn’t understand insurance, so insurers need to translate why it is an exciting industry. He said the war for talent is over and talent won: employees have choices, and companies have to change what he called 300 years of doing business in the old way.

The upside is geography. Carriers whose headquarters aren’t in Chicago, New York or San Francisco no longer need talent to relocate to Milwaukee, Birmingham, Alabama or Portland, Maine, so they can reach talent they couldn’t before.

Jay also said the industry has to do a better job of selling the mission to young people: millennials and Gen Z say over and over that they want to do good, and few industries are as mission-driven as insurance, which is there for people during some of the worst events of their lives. Gilad, who started InsurTechLA out of passion, agreed.

Organ Rejection

Asked how insurers bring in talent that knows blockchain or AI when their own veterans have 20 years in the business, Jay said there are many talented people inside who get it, but the real challenge is twofold: attracting outsiders, and making sure the legacy organization lets them succeed. He described organ rejection: a carrier that has been around 175 years, with a senior team that is out of date on customer experience and distribution, hires innovation talent that pushes against the organization and can be doomed unless senior management actively buys in. Gilad added that the key word is buy-in and reaching a new status quo.

On how he identifies great leaders, Jay said there is no magic wand. Track record matters, but so does matching the skills to the job: a head of distribution may need a different skill set than the obvious competitor hire if the company wants real change. He added that “tough times don’t last, tough people do” is true: he was told a couple of times he wasn’t meant for this industry and ignored it, and success comes down to how many times you get back up.

Advice: A Book on 400 Years of American Capitalism

Jay is working harder than ever, up at 5 a.m. (he can’t sleep anymore, he says), walking his dogs, and cooking on weekends, and the time he saved on planes now goes to talking with more executives about their next move and with people hoping to get into insurtech. He reads every night, and recommended a book he had just finished about 400 years of American capitalism and the people who built lasting companies.

Key Takeaways

• Legacy carriers largely adapted to remote work without the layoffs of 2008; workforce changes are driven by innovation.
• Executives, like their companies, need a digital profile and personal brand; Jay credits his for doubling his business.
• Insurers now need AI, machine learning, digital and direct-to-consumer leaders, which means hiring from outside insurance, and talent holds the power.
• Remote work lets carriers recruit without requiring relocation to their headquarters.
• Insurance needs to sell its mission to young people who want to do good.
• New hires from outside can suffer organ rejection without active senior-management buy-in.