By Andy Bye, Executive Director, NPRe
In his recent piece on AI, my colleague Gabriel outlined how AI has structured our data flows, enabling better risk selection, portfolio management and client services. I want to pick up that thread from a different angle, as AI is taking away certain manual operational tasks, we look at what our underwriters and data analytics people are focusing on now. Meaningful data drives the validity of AI solutions, and at the moment there are many spaces where AI falls short. As NPRe evolves, we are creating a vision for the profile of people we and our industry needs to hire next. It’s been well-documented that the insurance industry is facing a demographic cliff, but in addressing this gap we need to ensure we’re attracting quality talent as well. Few industries offer such a diverse range of sectors, high earning potential and opportunities for travel as ours. Opportunities for data optimization in emerging sectors, with cyber risks, the energy transition, electronic health records, etc are matching the skillset for digitally-driven job seekers,[1] and the industry needs to prioritise communicating our career opportunities that align with their ambitions.
Reinsurance is changing. Not in a disruptive, headline-grabbing way, but in a quiet, more fundamental way. The work itself is being reshaped by data science, machine learning and advanced modelling. Developing a culture around the data means having a reinsurance data leadership team, a practice recommended by Deloitte.[2] This team establishes standards and creates an overall strategy, with a mix of new people and those with institutional knowledge. While reinsurance portfolios are becoming more complex, much of the industry struggles to adapt to this exciting landscape due to outdated technologies, unstructured data formats and overreliance on spreadsheets. Reinsurers, such as us, who recognize the benefits of data-driven insights maximise the potential of today’s market and new generation of jobseekers. The treaties and risks haven’t changed, but how we read them, price them and learn from them has and that shifts the kind of person who will succeed.
The skills mix has shifted
For most of reinsurance’s history, the underwriter’s edge came from judgement built by experience. Pattern recognition, market knowledge, an instinct for where a submission didn’t quite add up. That hasn’t gone away, but now data and analytics strategy is necessary for outcomes in today’s market. It’s reported that underwriters and actuaries spend 2/3 of their time doing basic transformations before using data to make decisions.[3] Intuition matters and can’t be taught, but advanced D&A is a differentiator when it comes to better risk selection and portfolio management.[4]
Today, the underwriters and analysts doing the most interesting work in our industry are the ones who can read a model output as fluently as a slip, who can interrogate the data behind a portfolio, and who can ask the right questions about the right datasets.
The soft skills, though, matter more than ever. When the technical heavy lifting can be supported by machines, what differentiates a great underwriter is everything the machines can’t do. Building trust with a cedent. Pushing back constructively on a broker. Reading the room in a renewal conversation. Knowing when the data is telling you something real and when it’s telling you something convenient. These are the skills behind the enduring partnerships our business is built on, and no amount of modelling sophistication replaces them. This is the core of our data team. We invest in our people to integrate the latest D&A advances in their processes with an eye to their progress, and they bring the right attitude and mind for a fast-paced, problem-solving environment.
We look for a hybrid profile. Curious about data, ability to challenge a model, and human enough to know when the answer lies outside the model.
The industry has a problem which needs solving now
Reinsurance has a well-understood talent acquisition challenge: the pipeline of younger professionals entering the industry isn’t keeping pace with the experience leaving it.
We’re competing for talent with technology firms, consultancies, fintechs and asset managers. These are businesses that have spent years building reputations as places where smart, data-fluent people can do interesting work with a clear trajectory. Reinsurance has failed in communicating that we offer the same opportunities, with similar earning potentials, global opportunities, involvement in more diverse sectors and often a better work-life balance. We’re still the convoluted and elusive industry that markets itself badly, recruits narrowly, and assumes graduates will find their way to us through family connections or a careers fair stand.
What we need to do
If the industry is serious about attracting the next generation, we need to recognize where we are falling behind our peer industries as well as communicate our strengths.
Redesign the early-career experience for our underwriters and analysts. Too much of the industry still puts its brightest joiners onto manual data extraction, repetitive admin, and the kind of work that AI could be doing. If a graduate’s first two years are spent on tasks that don’t develop their judgement, we shouldn’t be surprised when they leave for somewhere that does. Early career roles rebuilt around analysis, client exposure and real underwriting decisions, supported by technology rather than buried under it. The people we hire should be able to see, from day one, how their careers compound.
Widen the door. The pool of people we traditionally recruit from is too narrow for the skills we now need. Data science graduates, engineers, people from adjacent industries all have a great deal to offer reinsurance, but only if we make our case clearly and offer a route in that doesn’t require retraining from scratch. That means better outreach, better conversion from STEM disciplines, and frankly better storytelling about what working in insurance looks like.
Talk about the job honestly. Reinsurance is intellectually demanding, globally connected and enables political and economic developments. We sit behind the most important risk decisions in the world economy, and we build relationships with cedents and brokers that often lasts decades. That’s a story worth telling, but we are guilty of telling it badly or not at all.
The cost of standing still
The reinsurers that thrive over the next decade will be the ones who have built environments where data-fluent, relationship-led professionals want to spend their careers. Where technical investment supports human judgement rather than substituting for it. Where early career people are trusted as decision-makers. Where the partnerships with clients, brokers, and the people who work in the business are built to last.
The firms that don’t will find themselves increasingly unable to compete, not because they lack capital or capacity, but because they lack the people who fit with the modern market.
That’s the choice in front of us as an industry, and it’s not one we can defer much longer.
[1] Pg. 5 Tech_Trend_Radar_2025.pdf
[2] The Importance of a Reinsurance Data Management Strategy | Deloitte US
[3] How to Futureproof Data and Analytics Capabilities for Reinsurers
[4] How to Futureproof Data and Analytics Capabilities for Reinsurers