Scaling the heights

There was a time when all brokers could recruit specialist staff locally. By specialist I mean well-trained people with skills in broking, underwriting, claims and customer service. This is no longer the case, as outside the bigger centres this talent pool has dried up almost completely.

The market has moved on as insurers and global brokers have consolidated and withdrawn from the urban high street to their call-centre bastions, taking with them much of the market for local, insurance-based jobs. Very few school leavers and graduates now place insurance on their careers wish lists, and, even if you manage to recruit talented people there is an equally large problem with retention.

Salary potential and career progression are two factors that are essential in attracting and retaining raw talent, but there is a third priority in the minds of young job seekers; intellectual stimulation. Too many graduates still see insurance as boring and unexciting, a conception that is based largely on ignorance, so as a consequence the industry's future depends on shaping and selling a more dynamic image. We need to create a virtuous cycle urgently, raising standards of training and development to generate more qualified brokers that will in turn change steadily the perception of the industry. Doing this will allow us to attract the talented people that currently see the law or accountancy as a more professional, lucrative and challenging option.

The world of insurance is changing too. Brokers are all too aware of the threat from telephone and online direct sellers, as well as the new entrants with big marketing budgets such as supermarkets and banks. This challenge leaves us with one credible survival strategy; responding with the products and services that customers want and adding value in the process.

Training and competence is key to unlocking the value factors that single you out from your competitors, so, as well as honing their selling expertise, your staff members need to be first-class communicators that are technically competent and really understand the customer and their requirements.

Continuous changes in market practices and the constant challenges and opportunities brought by regulation and technology means that there are always new skills to be learned. Investment in the training and development of new talent is essential if you have an objective of improving business performance.

From the outset

In my opinion, the first aim should be chartered status for individuals and firms as the Chartered Insurance Institute's chartered title for firms sends out a very definite signal to customers, other professions and job seekers alike. It is a statement that the majority, if not all, of your board members are appropriate chartered title holders, and furthermore that at least 90% of your client-facing staff are CII members following approved competency and assessment processes. Chartered status also demonstrates that both your firm and your staff are committed to the CII's code of ethics and conduct.

It is no accident that companies with robust training and competence programmes are those where the professional qualification ethos runs right through the culture from top to bottom. I tell school leavers and graduates that if they want to join a company that values career development then they should take a look at the qualifications of the executive board first. Chartered status allows you to stand out from the crowd and advertise your commitment to professionalism in a highly competitive jobs market; it will go a long way to putting broking firms on a par with other professions.

Competency

Any competency model you choose to adopt, such as the CII's insurance broking competency framework, should not constrain people development but rather should allow employees to measure themselves against benchmarks that define the minimum levels of competence for virtually any role in a modern broking office. Frameworks allow employers to create profiles and plan future development and fundamentally must cover the important areas of technical knowledge, business knowledge and interpersonal skills.

There is a mind-boggling array of training and development options. The British Insurance Brokers' Association, for instance, offers a series of master classes that are often business based and cover topics such as regulatory demands, fees and transparency. The CII and the Financial Services Sector Skills Council both offer lists of accredited suppliers and are good starting points for selecting training partners. That does not mean that non-accredited trainers should not be used, but extra care is needed to ensure they deliver effective, good-quality programmes aligned to your core activities, business objectives and your budget.

Returning to school leavers and graduates, it should be an absolute minimum expectation of any broker that all staff members take the CII's Foundation Insurance Test. FIT is a foundation course in insurance practice, though it does, incidentally, give six credits towards future studies for qualifications such as the Certificate in Insurance. FIT is not only useful as an induction process for school leavers and graduates that combines effectively with work-practice learning, but it is also essential for introducing non-broking staff, such as HR, IT and finance, into the wider insurance culture.

After that, the career development path of individuals should strive for the blend of competence and aspiration mentioned previously. For the smaller broker the CII can assume the role of virtual manager in this essential process of training from scratch and filling skills gaps to meet the demands of the regulatory regime. Through its Broker Academy the CII offers a training and development facility for brokers, catering for all styles in achieving competence, developing relevant solutions such as face-to-face training, online learning, tracking and assessment.

The academy's online platform, Broker Assess, provides access to a raft of technical learning modules and assessment tools to keep your staff up to date with regulatory, legislative and market changes. It includes a library of technical content that helps you assess and meet your development needs. You can also set your own training and competency assessments using the knowledge assessment system that works at three levels, introductory, intermediary and advanced, covering a range of subjects in bite-size offerings.

Budgets

Cost is a decisive factor. Too many brokers cut corners on training and development because they have not integrated it into their business plan properly and therefore not budgeted for it. It is a fact of life in small firms that what are seen as core business activities such as customer contact, product development and growing the business take precedence over compliance, regulation and competency issues. However, few now dispute that the latter are areas that must be managed professionally. It is often felt that dedicated training and development resources are unaffordable luxuries for smaller business, though the Broker Academy can act as a virtual manager or external consultants can be used to help develop the right plan for you.

Equally, no one can afford simply to throw money at the problem. A mix of training methods applied from director level downwards is one way to balance out the costs, while classroom training is undoubtedly expensive but can be blended with online learning and internally grown support including intranet-based activity or coaching and mentoring within the office.

Some insurers have provided excellent technical, account management, sales and marketing skills training historically. This type of support by insurers to their main distribution partners has been seen as mutually beneficial and many large insurers have provided it free of charge as a consequence. However, with the spotlight now focused so starkly on commission issues, particularly fees and transparency, this has now clouded the issue somewhat and we may see less training offered on this basis.

Towergate sees training as only the first part of the process and we are developing even more effective mechanisms for transferring learning to the workplace. Our management academy involves research projects and initiatives that relate directly to real business issues and aim to produce results and improve business performance. They are an integral part of the learning programme and robust key performance indicators ensure that we can measure individual or group contributions.

Inspiring

As well as being cost-effective and aligned to your business objectives, all training and development programmes need to include the aspirational. Good continuing professional development will allow scope to encourage individuals to develop skills not necessarily aligned to their current role. For instance, a property underwriter may consider casualty training or management development opportunities with the aim of extending expertise in the liability arena or developing the potential to move into a managerial role. Learning a second language on a voluntary basis similarly may enhance the prospect of gaining overseas experience. Team-building residential management courses and away days of the sort that became very popular in the 1980s and 1990s can also play a part in building commitment and inspiring young recruits.

The development of core management skills is another area that is problematic for brokers; external management courses in particular are invariably expensive and few are specific to the broker industry. One solution is to develop your own capabilities by building resources within the company, for instance developing an academy, which could play a big part in addressing the development of key management skills and can act as a conduit for wider business skills training throughout the group.

There is ample evidence from this model that a robust career development programme attracts good people to work for you in turn. We need to cast the net much wider and use more imaginative methods of attracting talented people to our challenging profession. Insurance broking embraces service industry skills that extend way beyond selling insurance policies, ranging from IT and finance to advertising and HR.

In the end the equation is a simple one. Well directed, role-related and aspirational training and development equals competent and professional staff, which in turn equals better recruitment prospects and ultimately improved business performance.

- Fiona Andrews, Group head of people development and reward, Towergate.