Aon's Moore: London market needs psychological shift on talent

To prepare for emerging macro risks, the London market must address strategic questions around talent, according to Rupert Moore, UK CEO of Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions, and Louisa Blain, Aon’s head of insurance for Human Capital.

To achieve long-term, profitable growth, what issues around talent will the market have to address?

Rupert Moore: Looking at the London Market Group’s Why London Matters report, the market employs about 59,000 people in the UK. When you break down the age demographic, 24 percent are older than 50, who can be expected to retire in the next 10-15 years. It’s reasonably well balanced with 24 percent of employees being younger than 30, so that's great, but how will we grow that baseline if all we're doing is replacing people?

The London market grew premium volumes 32 percent over the past couple of years, but it's underperforming US E&S growth rates and Bermuda. Maybe that points to the fact that while we’ve brought people into the market, we’re only replacing what we've got and we're not growing the skill sets overall. Here is where, as a market, we need a psychological shift.

In that context, what emerging macro risks should the London market be prepared for?

RM: There are three: geopolitical risk, for example Russia and Ukraine as well as the Middle East and Israel; technology risk is another, with CrowdStrike a recent reminder; and lastly climate-related issues.

As these risks increase in scale and maturity, the more in-house expertise we’ll need to help our clients understand them better. When it comes to insurers and reinsurers, it's the same pattern, so how do you find people with those skill sets? How do you encourage them into the insurance industry, and away from other niche areas? I think this is the biggest issue on most CEOs’ minds when they're thinking about growth strategy.

Louisa Blain: I’ve been working in this area for over 25 years; there’s been a dramatic shift in the conversation. What's noticeable now is the level of attention and focus at board level on these strategic questions.

Whilst we need to think about how we bring in different skill sets, we also need to look at how we retain and upskill those who’ve been in the market for a while. We are increasingly asking for them to consider working differently, more collaboratively, and think about new forms of data-led decision-making to address emerging risks.

What talent profiles will become vital for London in the coming years?

RM: The more we can be the experts in those emerging areas, the better. That means being at the forefront of the science around climate technology risk, for example, and how you truly understand cyber risk. Geopolitical risk is also continually evolving as different governments come to power. The more insight we can bring to these, the better we'll be able to understand them, and therefore attract capital to solve for them.

LB: Clustering talent around those three areas will be important and we see three key talent categories relevant for each of them. One is the insurance practitioners – those with the depth of insurance knowledge and how the market works – working alongside the industry futurists who can bring expertise, foresight and different ways of thinking that challenge our market. Then there's a change orchestrator role to help groups work together, to recognise the challenges, and help us find new solutions and products. We also have to think about managing different generations of talent.

The London market offers opportunities to work within a globally important issue, such as climate risk, cyber crime and political risk. Is this making a difference in attracting new talent?

LB: The London market is a phenomenal place to be. The storytelling behind the purpose-led nature of our work is important to attract and help people understand what we do. We all need to turn up the volume.