investing in the future is vital

On 9 October, Alasdair Stewart, head of corporate development (general insurance) at the Chartered Insurance Institute wrote: Let's face it, insurance has never been great at attracting good people or giving a clear picture of a career path. For every company that sets the professional standards its new staff need to reach within, say, five years, and rewards them for it, there's another which hands them a chair and a phone and says "off you go".

Sometimes it's not clear what investment insurance businesses are willing to make in their younger staff. For example, would they pay for CII membership or help them with developing networking skills? The evidence of this is often hard to find. Yet we wonder why our industry's youth is not so much Generation Y but Generation 'why bother'.

A lot of this is dictated by how much employers encourage their junior staff to become qualified, embrace ethical behaviour and treating customers fairly. Training and development and investing in their human capital is going to make them more money in the long run. The pay-back is long term, but the investment in young people is money well spent.

On 22 October, Andrew Tjaardstra wrote: The Catlin Arctic Survey has reported that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during summer within a decade. The seriousness of this development is hard to know but Dr Martin Sommerkorn of the Worldwide Fund for Nature's International Arctic Programme, said: "Such a loss of Arctic ice sea cover has recently been assessed to set in motion powerful climate feedbacks that will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself - self perpetuating cycles, amplifying and accelerating the consequences of global warming. This could lead to flooding affecting one-quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions from massive carbon pools and extreme global weather changes."