With rising climate risks, tighter regulations, and customer demands for seamless digital service, the insurance industry is at a tipping point.
The Josh Bersin Company, the world’s most trusted HR advisory firm, is releasing a new research study, Intelligent Adaptation in Insurance—Predicting the Unpredictable. The report explores how the most advanced leadership organizations in the global $10 trillion insurance sector are evolving their leadership models, transforming hiring strategies, and adapting to rapidly shifting consumer forces.
Key findings show the industry is moving beyond traditional risk mitigation to proactive, data-driven, digitally integrated partnerships. Insurers are embedding services across industries, expanding consumer touchpoints, and creating direct engagement channels—while tackling historic underinvestment in AI, blockchain, and IoT.
Leading the way are “Pacesetter” insurance companies, which are building dynamic, consumer-focused and data-driven organizational models. They use talent intelligence to recruit efficiently, reduce time-to-hire, and find candidates with the right skills and adaptability. They also apply adjacent skill strategies to create effective reskilling plans and career pathways.
The Josh Bersin Company team analyzed patterns drawn from billions of skills data points about the insurance sector, analyzed as part of the ongoing Global Workforce Intelligence (GWI) Project developed in partnership with talent intelligence leader Eightfold AI. The GWI initiative combines AI-driven data with insights from global insurance CHROs to identify Pacesetters—companies that outperform peers by aligning talent strategies with key business challenges.
The research found that insurance companies recognize a critical need: to better manage unpredictable risks, which means shifting from retrospective to proactive risk strategies. Pacesetters focus on a strategy Josh Bersin Company researchers identify as the embrace of intelligent adaptability based on data. Other key findings in the report include:
- Just 9% of the insurance workforce is in digital and tech roles, compared to 47% in sales and marketing. As a result, the industry still relies heavily on manual processes and has low data analytics adoption. At the same time, employers benefit from strong career loyalty, with low turnover and high satisfaction—great for CHROs and long-term planning, but now creating urgency to upskill staff in digital, product design, AI, and other emerging skills.
- To do this, Pacesetter insurance companies are embracing new technology and making strategic talent and organizational shifts. The study highlights concerted efforts around building talent hubs, partnering with top universities, and hiring adaptable, high-potential talent—especially in tech and risk—to fuel internal change.
- Pacesetters are also designing skill-based career pathways and making upskilling attractive and accessible. The most advanced Pacesetters are deploying digital twins and VR onboarding to retain institutional knowledge in roles with rare skill sets.
- Commercially, insurance Pacesetters are transforming product access by embedding insurance into other industries—driven by newly formed product teams and revamped consumer digital channels, both firsts for the sector.
- While most insurers are slow to invest in AI, the industry’s Pacesetters are moving ahead—recognizing that falling behind on adaptability could be costly, and that adopting new technologies is essential to stay competitive in the 2020s and beyond.
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Stella Ioannidou, Senior Research Director of The Josh Bersin Company, says:
“With only 9% of their workforce in digital and technology roles versus 47% in sales and marketing, insurance companies need to shift from retrospective to proactive risk management. The industry faces significant challenges in embracing data-driven decision making and predicting unpredictable risks, but lessons can and should be learned from the market’s Pacesetters who organize and operate in ways that supercharge their adaptability.”
Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, says:
“Insurance is a landscape ripe for disruption, and it’s striking how aggressive some of the market leaders are in moving to remain relevant. The problem is that many players risk being left behind if they don’t start to embrace the levels of new thinking around use of technology, skills, and talent management like their Pacesetting peers are.”
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Source: PR Newswire
