Insurance salaries & market trends

What key trends have you witnessed in 2017?

There has definitely been an increase in insurance start-ups, challenger brands and Lloyd’s syndicates are making more of a commitment to marketing and communications hiring.

These marketing hires are often a company’s first within the insurance market, so there has been the need for a greater deal of education to assist these firms to hire at an appropriate level in a timely fashion. Of course prior experience in the insurance is a desirable attribute when recruiting these individuals.

The insurance market was booming in 2016 and although we did see a drop-off, especially in more senior hires over the majority of 2017, the latter part of 2017 has seen an improvement, giving us greater optimism for 2018. Junior marketing roles have remained constant. Companies are continuing to hire more tactical marketers to remain competitive in the London market.

What key trends do you expect to see over the next 12 months?

We expect to see some of the larger companies in the insurance market start to recruit more channel specific marketing roles, meaning candidates with strong direct marketing experience will be in high demand. We also predict an increase in demand for marketing managers and senior marketing managers with a broad marketing background, involving traditional and digital skills.

Candidates with exposure to campaign management, direct marketing and stakeholder management as well as social media, SEO/PPC and digital platforms will also continue to be in demand.

What methods are companies using to attract and retain the top talent?

Bonuses continue to be a key attraction and retention tactic for insurance organisations. Whereas other sub-sectors of financial services often apportion bonus based on 50% company profitability and 50% personal performance, insurers can swing to nearer 100% of bonus based on marketing KPIs.

The insurance market will continue to reward its marketing professionals based on their own personal achievements. Of course the company profitability needs to be taken into consideration, but where a number of other areas of FS often view this as 50/50, the insurance space remunerates bonuses more in line with personal success.

Do you anticipate any changes to permanent salaries and bonuses over the next 12 months?

The insurance market is generally regarded as on a par, if not paying slightly more than many other facets of financial services and we do not see this changing in 2018. It is clear insurance firms still need to compete for marketing and communications talent, so we do expect to see salary increases over the course of 2018, as well as more competitive performance linked bonus structures.

Contract roles & day rates

The insurance sector has required interim assistance in the wake of restructures to provide on-going support to marketing functions. Well known insurers seem to be stepping up their efforts in approaching high net worth Individuals by utilising the skills of interim professionals to create functions to set strategic objectives for 2018. With high importance placed on these key hires, day rates for these Head of/Director level roles are between £600 and £1000 per day.

There is always importance placed on moving interim processes quickly to secure the best candidates and we found this was particularly the case at the junior end of the market. Marketing executives with one to two years’ insurance experience were highly sought after by competitor firms to assist with work load.

Day rates are between £150 and £220 per day and, where possible, these interim roles would develop  into more permanent fixtures or rolling contracts.