Important role of HR in Insurance

From left: International Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka Chairman Dinesh Weerakkody, Janashakthi Insurance MD Prakash Shaffter, Suresh Muttiah from Union Assurance, LIMRA Head of Research Saurav Biswas, and AIA Director Chaturi Munaweera

The insurance industry employs a workforce of about 18,000-20,000 and has an agency force of about 45,000. Insurance as a market has strong growth potential, but penetration ability of insurers remains relatively low. 

A panel at the Annual Insurance Congress on the topic ‘HR challenges in a consolidating industry’, consisting of International Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka Chairman Dinesh Weerakkody, Janashakthi Insurance MD Prakash Shaffter, Suresh Muttiah from Union Assurance, and AIA Director Chaturi Munaweera, noted that attracting new talent has always been a challenge for the industry. 

Hence, HR professionals will need to continue to focus on building a strong employer brand and talent development tools to attract new talent. This will require the HR community to work together to generate a more positive image of insurance in academic and professional fields and among school communities. 

At the same time, HR must continue to develop existing employees and reskill them to perform in the new roles that will emerge with the changes and disruptions that the industry is currently facing. Dinesh Weerakkody noted in his address that a HR strategy to help employees embrace new technological advances and build organisation capabilities to adopt new business models will be required. 

He noted that HR will have to be a strong advocate of the digital transformation within the organisation that goes beyond basic HR Systems and therefore, HR must be able to embrace concepts such as digital talent within organisations and develop reward systems that are not based only on team performance or simply on education/technical qualifications, but more merit-driven, and that promotes creativity and innovation. The panel in general noted that if skill development is an issue and if the industry is not able to grow all the talent from within, it has to take advantage of the regulatory landscape, which provides opportunities for consolidations, partnerships, etc.