More than half of property/casualty insurers do not have written CEO succession plans in place, and for nearly three-quarters, there is no board committee to identify desired skills for the next top leader or other planning items.
Executive Summary
More than half of property/casualty insurers surveyed by Carrier Management and The Jacobson Group do not have written CEO succession plans in place. This article is the first part of a two-part summary of survey results. Part 2, "Strategy is a Missing Piece of Many Carrier Succession Plans: Survey," examines key parts of the succession plans for those companies that have them in place.In total, 58 percent of P/C insurance carrier executives and directors surveyed late last year said their companies had no written CEO succession plan. The survey, conducted by Carrier Management and The Jacobson Group, elicited responses from more than 100 CEOs, board members and leaders of human resources representing a cross-section of the U.S. P/C carrier population.
The 58 percent figure seems to indicate some room for improvement in the P/C insurance industry when compared to broader studies across industries. Online sources citing cross-industry research from the National Association of Corporate Directors, for example, note that almost the same percentage—roughly 57 percent of 1,000 public company directors—said they do have a formal plan in NACD’s latest survey, up from 39 percent in 2011. (“The 2014-2015 NACD Public Company Governance Survey,” cited in a Dec. 22, 2014 article in Corporate Counsel, “The Board of Directors in 2014 and Beyond,” by Rebekah Mintzer.)
