Developing the Staff of an Insurance Company: Competencies and Training

The development of an insurer's employees directly affects the quality of underwriting, the accuracy of documents, the speed of claim payments and client trust. Training must combine insurance knowledge, work with data, communication, digital security and compliance with the law.

Employee development is a two-way process, depending both on the individual and on the opportunities provided by the company's management. There are a great many ways to develop staff, but managers often neglect these opportunities, assuming that an employee's development depends on the employee alone. In this case it is not only the staff who lose out but also the company, which misses the chance to develop faster and to raise productivity and quality of work. Among the most effective ways of developing a company's employees are corporate training and career planning. This article is about these two ways.

In-house training is a special form of organizing adult education. As a rule, it is designed with the specific features of the company and its corporate culture in mind. There are two approaches to creating a training programme, which can conditionally be called the expert approach and the process approach.

The expert approach means building the training programme on the knowledge and experience of an invited consultant. The consultant's task is then reduced to diagnostics and to working out a decision on the direction of change and staff development. The consultant acts as a bearer of expert knowledge that can be applied to the specific situation in the organization. As a rule, the consultant's decisions are independent of the staff and rely on the norms established in the insurance market.

With the process approach, the consultant works out the decision in the course of working with the company's staff. Creating and implementing a training programme requires the active participation of the company's management team, which is the main driving force behind the changes. As a rule, the staff are also required to cooperate actively with the consultant, with the possibility of taking part in shaping the training programme. Speaking of the specific tasks of in-house training, one must decide what goals the training programmes are to achieve, and this depends on what type of consulting process will be carried out at the enterprise. In the case of expert consulting, the training programme should probably give the participants knowledge about the typical problems they may encounter in their professional activity, the norms for solving them and the external situation. That is, the goal is the transfer of knowledge. In the case of process consulting, in addition to a body of professional knowledge, the participants must develop an attitude towards change, mastery of new forms of individual behaviour and development of ways of working as a group. That is, the goal is not so much the transfer of knowledge as the formation of an orientation towards changing individual and group behaviour.

A system of in-house training can be effective only if the existing situation has been analyzed, the prospects assessed and an image of the desired future formed, changes forecast, change projects prepared, and deadlines and costs determined.

The next way of developing staff is career planning. This way is oriented towards the employee's future. A career is a sequence of actions, deeds and aspirations of an individual that affect his or her position in the business environment. To manage employees' careers effectively, it is important to consider the notion of an intra-organizational career, which is connected with a person's movement up the career ladder within the organization. This movement can take place in several directions:

• Vertical career – promotion to higher positions

• Horizontal career – work in different structural units of one company at equivalent levels

• Centripetal career – movement towards the core of the organization, the centre of management, with ever greater involvement in decision-making.

When hiring a person, it is important to understand how well the field of activity he or she will find himself or herself in suits that person. J. Holland's widely used personality typology is well suited to assessing the individual and optimizing the activity of a new employee:

Such a typology makes it possible to avoid the typical mistakes of hiring people for whom a particular kind of activity is not natural, which would undoubtedly lead to lower productivity or may even affect the company's image. Although, according to Holland's concept, one of the types always dominates, a person can adapt to conditions by using the strategies of two or more types.

The closer the orientations (the sectors on the circle) of the dominant and the second (third) orientation, the closer the personality types. Taking into account the content of the dominant and non-dominant orientations, one can choose the kinds of activity that are closer to the person and in which he or she will be more successful. If the dominant and the following orientations are far apart, it is harder to choose a career.

The career stage (as a point on the time axis) is not always connected with the stage of professional development. A person who is at the promotion stage may, within another profession, not yet be a high-level professional. It is therefore important to distinguish between the career stage, a time period in the development of the individual, and the phases of a professional's development, the periods of mastering an activity.
In accordance with the phases of a professional's development, the following are distinguished:

• optant (the optation phase). The person is concerned with the choice, or the forced change, of a profession and makes this choice. There can be no exact chronological boundaries here, as with the other phases, since age characteristics are set not only by physiological but also by multifaceted cultural conditions;

• adept (the adept phase). This is a person who has already embarked on the path of commitment to the profession and is mastering it. Depending on the profession this can be a many-year process or a very short one (for example, simple instruction);

• adaptant (the adaptation phase, the young specialist getting used to the work). However well the training of a given professional in an educational institution is organized, it never fits production work "like a key in a lock";

• internal (the internal phase). An experienced worker who loves his or her work and can perform the main professional functions quite independently, ever more reliably and successfully, as acknowledged by colleagues at work and in the profession;

• master (the continuing phase of mastery). The worker can solve both simple and the most difficult professional tasks, which perhaps not all colleagues can manage;

• authority (the phase of authority, which, like the phase of mastery, is also summed with the following one). A master of his or her craft, already well known in the professional circle or even beyond it (in the industry, in the country). Depending on the forms of staff attestation adopted in the profession, he or she holds one or another high formal qualification indicator;

• mentor (the mentoring phase). An authoritative master of his or her craft, in any profession, "gathers around" like-minded people, people who adopt his or her experience, and pupils.

Promotion is determined not only by the employee's personal qualities (education, qualifications, attitude to work, the system of internal motivation) but also by objective factors, in particular:

• the career peak – the highest post existing in the particular organization under consideration;

• career length – the number of positions on the way from the first position held by the individual in the organization to the peak;

• position level indicator – the ratio of the number of persons employed at the next hierarchical level to the number of persons employed at the hierarchical level where the individual is at a given moment of his or her career;

• potential mobility indicator – the ratio (over a certain period of time) of the number of vacancies at the next hierarchical level to the number of persons employed at the hierarchical level where the individual is.

Depending on objective conditions, an intra-organizational career can be promising or a dead end: an employee may have either a long career line or a very short one. When admitting a candidate, the HR manager should already design a possible career and discuss it with the candidate on the basis of individual characteristics and the specifics of motivation. The same career line may be attractive to some employees and uninteresting to others, which will significantly affect the effectiveness of their further work.

Which competencies an insurer needs in 2026

• Underwriting: risk assessment, data quality and justification of terms.
• Claims handling: gathering evidence, calculating loss and clear communication.
• Actuarial analytics: rates, reserves and model validation.
• Law and compliance: licences, compulsory types of insurance, consumer protection and AML/CFT.
• Cybersecurity: personal data, phishing and access management.
• Digital tools: automation, electronic documents and analytics.
• Client communication: explaining exclusions and decisions in plain language.

Competency matrix

For each role it is useful to define knowledge and skills by level: basic, independent, advanced and expert. A matrix helps to see the gap between current and required competencies, to plan training and not to send all employees on the same course.

For example, a contact-centre specialist needs confident knowledge of the product and of how enquiries are routed, while an underwriter needs statistical analysis and knowledge of industry risks. A manager must be able to check the quality of decisions and to manage conflicts of interest.

Training formats

• an induction programme and a mentor for a new employee;
• short modules on changes in legislation;
• analysis of real cases and mistakes without disclosing personal data;
• simulations of a road accident, a large loss and crisis communication;
• rotation between sales, underwriting and claims;
• professional certification and external courses;
• a knowledge base with the current version of documents;
• knowledge testing and feedback after training.

How to measure the result

Course attendance does not prove development. Before and after the programme, indicators connected with the work should be compared: the number of errors in policies, the share of documents returned, the time taken to consider a claim, the accuracy of rating, the justification of refusals and the quality of client communication.

Metrics that encourage harmful behaviour should be avoided. For example, a requirement to shorten the payment period at any cost may lower the quality of checks, and a sales plan without control of the client's needs may lead to unnecessary products being pushed on clients.

Career paths

An employee must understand what knowledge is needed for the next level and how to confirm it. A career path may be managerial or expert. A strong actuary, lawyer or underwriter does not have to become a head of department in order to grow in status and remuneration.

Transparent criteria reduce subjectivity in promotion. The decision must take into account results, professional ethics, the ability to teach colleagues and the quality of work with risk.

Sales training without pressure selling

A manager must be able to identify the need, explain the limitations and record the client's consent. A sale must not be built on a promise of a guaranteed payment or on hiding the deductible. Checking the quality of calls and documents is more useful than formal memorization of a script.

Services under compulsory types of insurance are provided only by insurance companies that hold the relevant licence. Employees and intermediaries must understand the limits of their authority and must not present advice as a decision of the insurer or the regulator.

Working with artificial intelligence

AI can help analyze documents, classify enquiries and prepare drafts. But the employee is obliged to check the result, protect personal data and understand the limitations of the model. An automated decision that significantly affects a client requires oversight, explainability and a procedure for appeal.

A learning culture

Development is impossible if an employee is afraid to report a mistake. The company must distinguish a good-faith error from a violation and use incidents to improve the process. The manager sets the example: updates his or her knowledge, asks for feedback and acknowledges uncertainty.

A one-year development plan

1. Identify business risks and critical roles.
2. Assess competencies and find the gaps.
3. Set specific learning outcomes.
4. Choose the format and the people responsible.
5. Test knowledge on practical cases.
6. Measure work indicators after 1–3 months.
7. Update the programme in light of the results and changes in the market.

Summary

The development of an insurance company's staff is a shared responsibility of the employee and the employer. The original article below describes corporate training and career planning in detail; current practice supplements them with a competency matrix, digital skills, ethics and measurement of the real result.