There is no easy fix to remove the barriers to entry for millennials coming into the captive market, according to Teniko Eve, captive associate at Marsh.
Speaking at the ‘millennials perspective’ rapid-fire session, Eve said there was a lack of exposure for captives among millennials.
He explained: “What I’ve seen in my mentoring at the Bermuda Foundation for Insurance Studies is that most of the kids know about accounting and they’re interested in underwriting and broking, but no one really knows about captives.”
“I’ve been working for five years and I haven’t really heard about captives, outside being in captives. Growing up I heard of roles in underwriting and accounting and broking but not captives.”
Eve, a millennial himself, graduated with a degree in Risk Management and Insurance from University at St. John’s University in New York in 2013, and said there was limited focus on captives in his degree.
He stated: “I think there was maybe two lessons out of a whole semester of a risk management introduction course we did, we spent two lessons on captives but you don’t really get a lot of knowledge on captives.”
“I guess that is partly the industry but also educational opportunities.”
According to Eve, there are a number of barriers blocking entry to the captive space for millennials.
“The barriers to entry that millennials face in the Captive Industry is that there are a lack of graduate positions readily available, most of the positions are for account managers, which mostly require three to five years of industry experience.”
“Furthermore, there are less insurance or risk management roles in captives today than 20 years ago.”
“It is definitely something we are looking at but it is a hard fix because if the jobs aren’t there, they aren’t there, no small company is just going to create a risk manager or insurance role if they don’t need it.”
“That is a problem that we see and we’ve been trying to think how to address it but it is very difficult to address something like that.”