Senior Moves in Insurance, Q1 2023

Global economic uncertainty has negatively impacted senior hiring in Non-Life, but increased hiring within Intermediaries and Reinsurers

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This insights report reviews the biggest hiring trends within senior roles in Insurance globally. It will compare publicly available data to tell the story of what’s going on a quarterly basis. What year-on-year trends will we see and how significant are they for the year ahead?

Senior level hiring almost doubled in Q1 2023 compared with Q1 2022

For 2023:

For 2022:

The charts above show clearly that Q1 2023 senior hiring saw a significant rebound year-on-year. In fact, the sector as a whole showed a 74% increase. Senior hires in Insurance had been rising steadily throughout Q4 2022, and that momentum carried forward into the first three months of this year.

Some in the market speculate that this is due to certain sub-sectors benefitting from higher interest rates. At the same time, hiring within certain Non-Life specialist areas such as Cyber or Marine remains healthy but muted.  

Taking a closer look at this from a regional perspective:

For 2023:

For 2022:

We could characterise Q1 2023 as being primarily a resurgence in senior hiring in the Americas region, although the charts above show a rebound across all the regions. This chart also shows clearly that hiring slowed in March compared with the first two months of the year, so it will be interesting to see whether the robust quarterly numbers continue into Q2.

For 2023:

For 2022:

Taking a deeper dive by subsector, we see a remarkable change between Q1 2022 and Q1 2023. Whereas traditionally senior hiring is dominated by Non-Life, Q1 2023 saw Non-Life numbers come in much lower than those for Reinsurance and Intermediaries. The quarter did see a fair amount of M&A activity within the broking space that could go some way to explaining these numbers, while MGAs remain in demand for the efficiencies and niche specialist markets they can access, so we see the MGA space remaining robust for most, if not all the rest of this year.

For 2023:

For 2022:

The chart above shows the same information, where the decline in Non-Life senior hiring stands out loud and clear. Reinsurance hires have almost doubled, while Intermediaries and Life have both also picked up significantly y-o-y.

This pie chart shows that Non-Life still made up the largest single percentage of senior hires last quarter, albeit a significant tumble from 63.6% of the total in Q1 2022 down to 33.1% this year. Again, we can see Reinsurance coming in second, while the pie chart reiterates the huge y-o-y increase in senior hiring in the Intermediary and Life sub-sectors.

For 2022:

For 2023:

The above chart breaks down sub-sectors by region and shows once again the global significance of the North American market, which dominated every sub-sector last quarter besides Non-Life. Indeed, although senior hiring in Non-Life is down y-o-y in all regions, the drop in the Americas had the biggest impact overall.

Most popular Insurance senior roles in Q1 2023

For 2023:

For 2022:

These charts show a marked difference in the most popular roles hired for between Q1 2023 and Q1 2022. Whereas 2022 saw an emphasis on Non-Life and underwriting roles, 2023 so far has been much more about senior strategic roles, reflecting more of a focus on M&A and investments rather than operations.

For 2023:

For 2022:

Taking a deeper diver into the regional breakdown of these most popular roles shows some interesting differences. The numbers are fairly similar, though the Americas region seems to hire fewer CEOs than in EMEA or APAC, preferring to focus on Director roles instead.

For 2023:

For 2022:

Looking at the top 10 companies in the sector who have made the most senior hires, we can see some interesting changes. Despite Intermediaries hiring more overall in Q1 2023, the top 10 companies list in 2022 features more high-profile Brokers than in 2023, which seems to show more of a mix of Brokers, MGAs, and Carriers.