Role opportunities in Insurance, times are changing..

The insurance focus has shifted midway through the year to execution, strategic senior hires took place in Q1 and this has naturally progressed to a wave of hiring for the next layer down. We’re seeing a growing need for Change management  talent as a number of insurers have ambitious digital, M&A and transformation agendas. The need for strong PMO & project management skill sets is now key in the delivery phase.

In terms of candidates, given the consolidation M&A activity in the GI space we have an ever growing number of immediately available candidates who may need to adapt their skill sets to move over to Life, composite insurers, or join one of a number of new market entrants into Singapore.

With Chinese and Japanese insurers carrying surplus capital and looking to increase their footprint across SEA, I expect more change on the horizon. Now feels like a great time for European and American insurers to cut losses in difficult markets, a great example of this is the Allianz Korea sale to Chinese giants Anbang at the staggering low price of $3m USD. This made sense for all parties, given the stringent capital requirements for European and American insurers I expect to see more of the same.

Digital is still a big theme, with almost all of the incumbents having either a VC, innovation lab or data science presence in Singapore. Insurers are starting focus more on what this means in practice, rather than theory & strategy decks, the knock on impact of this is more technical and delivery roles emerging, particularly in the programming and data science fields.

Overall an exciting time to be in insurance with plenty more activity on the horizon. I read earlier that 330 million customers are buying insurance in China online, how long will it take before this consumer trend sweeps across the rest of Asia and transforms traditional distribution channels?