‘Busy season’ can mean a lot of things, depending on the industry you’re talking about. For accountants, the busy season leads up to the day taxes are due. The busy season for retail surrounds the winter holidays. On the other hand, for professionals in the property and casualty insurance industry, ‘busy season’ is a bit of a misnomer.

For insurers, you probably think of ‘busy season’ as the periods when certain natural disasters tend to be greater and more intense. For example, flood, wind, and hurricane insurance claims are more frequent during hurricane season, which lasts every year from June 1 through November 30. During hurricane season, hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean increases substantially, as does the probability of wind- and flooding-related property damage for the millions of homes along the United States coastline – from Texas to Maine.

However, due to climate change, natural disasters – from hurricanes to wildfires to severe convective storms – these seasons are lasting longer, and they are impacting greater geographic areas. For instance, as reflected in the 2023 CoreLogic® Hurricane Risk Report, hurricanes are wetter and stronger – bringing stronger winds further inland.

With stronger catastrophes and unpredictability pertaining to their occurrences, every day seems like it is a part of ‘busy season’ for insurers. Between wildfires into more inhabited wildfire-prone areas to hurricanes in coastal regions (and beyond) and the increase in other storms – all amid accidents that result in everyday damages – recruiting is a constant challenge.

Increased Demand Among a Diminishing Workforce

While the demand for insurance services is only increasing, the insurance workforce is in decline.

As older generations retire, younger generations are not entering the insurance industry in high enough numbers to replace the outgoing professionals.

In a 2021 report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce stated that the Bureau of Labor services estimated that over the following 15 years, 50% of the current workforce would retire, “leaving more than 400,000 open positions unfilled.” This report also went on to say that “all facets of the insurance industry will struggle to replace these workers at every level, particularly because millennials have not shown significant interest in insurance careers – less than 25% of the industry is under the age of 35.”

In the same aforementioned report, the Chamber of Commerce said that among the challenges the insurance industry has with attracting talent is “a general perception that the insurance industry and its corporate culture is boring.”

Solving Recruitment Challenges with Artificial Intelligence

So, how do you get younger professionals interested in the insurance industry? How do you make the crucial work of insurance professionals less “boring?”

The answer lies with innovative technology – something that both Millennials and members of Generation Z are generally used to utilizing in all other aspects of their lives. In this digital world, you must meet your prospects where they are.

Establishing an integrated digital ecosystem of modern technologies is crucial to growing your workforce so that it can accommodate busy season – and busy years altogether. These modern technologies will automate workflows to remove repetitive, administrative tasks. They will also connect with one another to make data management and sharing easier so that different stakeholders can collaborate and leverage each others’ work and expertise. In turn, professionals can focus on the more fulfilling parts of their jobs.

As you look at drawing in more talent for future busy seasons, you should also consider investment in technology embedded with artificial intelligence (AI).

With the amount of data now available to professionals across the insurance industry, AI technologies can help users manage, organize, and sift through relevant data so they can use it.

Artificial intelligence-driven technologies meaningfully analyze large quantities of data to produce intelligence that enables businesses to plan, strategize, and overcome problems.

In turn, you can attract a tech-savvy workforce with promises of more fulfilling work. Using sophisticated technologies, insurance work no longer has to be “boring.”

When you bring next generation technologies to your company, you will attract newer generations far easier. Giving them the opportunity to work with AI and make a more meaningful impact on your business with their unique skill sets is a draw for newer generations of workers.

Overcoming Employee Churn with Innovative Technologies

Tools to support recruitment should also address the issue of employee churn – an issue that plagues the insurance industry. Even when carriers can attract good talent, the turnover rate is high. In other words, it is important to leverage intuitive automation and AI-powered tools that do not require a lot of training, and ones that facilitate strategies for hiring professionals that already have the training they need to complete jobs.

One example is CoreLogic® Estimate™ – a tool that facilitates adjusters of all levels to complete comprehensive, accurate estimates. It combines intuitive diagramming and questionnaires to help estimators ensure they are completing their work comprehensively and accurately. By putting this tool into the hands of adjusters, you limit the time it takes to train them before they are ready to go onsite.

Another solution that would benefit recruiting in this environment is CoreLogic® Dispatch™ – an automatic resource assignment and dispatching system that ensures the most optimal claims resource is assigned to the right task. Carriers can customize criteria like skill level, licensure, geographic location, and more within Dispatch to ensure that the most qualified professionals are always assigned to each job site. This is beneficial both to the carrier, who eliminates rework by avoiding common cases of initially assigning under qualified professionals to jobs, and to adjusters – who will know that they are equipped to handle every job to which they are dispatched.

Dispatch also assigns resources to virtual claims tasks. By maximizing resources, you guarantee that you are consistently maximizing the skill set of every professional – making them more utilized and feeling more professionally fulfilled.

There are many options for updating your digital ecosystem to help you overcome recruitment challenges.

Leveraging Technology to Recruit for Busy Season

With industry veterans exiting the workforce and churn being an issue across the property insurance industry, it is important to make sure your organization has the infrastructure not only to attract employees – but to keep them. Having technology in place to make jobs more fulfilling, quicker, and to facilitate faster payments are integral to attracting and retaining an effective workforce.

To learn more about technologies – including platforms and applications that incorporate artificial intelligence – that enable insurers to recruit more effectively for “busy season,” contact us today.

©2023 CoreLogic, Inc. All rights reserved. The statements and information in this blog post may not be reproduced or used in any form without express written permission. While all the CoreLogic statements and information are believed to be accurate, CoreLogic makes no representation or warranty as to the completeness or accuracy of the statements and information in this blog post or the CoreLogic® Estimate™ and Dispatch™ tools and the AI-generated content therein, and CoreLogic assumes no responsibility whatsoever for any reliance on the information and statements herein or the tools. CoreLogic®, Estimate™, and Dispatch™ are the trademarks of CoreLogic, Inc. and its subsidiaries and/or affiliates.