How to make a modern oracle

Suncorp’s graduate program keeps the talent pipeline flowing as industry veterans age out

By Harris Pozderovic

Since first joining Suncorp in 2012, Kelly Pfeffer has seen the company’s graduate program go from strength to strength. As graduate lead, her first cycle of the yearly program involved reviewing more than 2500 applications from aspiring recruits.

For this year’s program, the number rose to more than 10,000, and Ms Pfeffer is already bracing for more, with the total for next year already surpassing 12,000.

“It’s not easy”, she tells Insurance News. “We try to automate as much as we can in there. We’ve had to also really think about how we structure and advertise the roles … to give as much information up front so the applicants are self-selecting for the right part of our business.”

This year, the company selected 63 graduates to take up two-year positions at its offices across Australia or New Zealand. About 25% of the recruits are allocated to insurance-based roles, and positions are also available in finance, technology, and people and culture.

However, before the young guns get started, they are brought up to speed on expectations when working in a corporate environment, through a series of workshops and panels. Following this orientation, graduates work closely with their team leaders and paired “buddies”, who help them acquire the technical knowledge needed for their positions.

“For a lot of university students, their only exposure to insurance might be in car insurance … so we just talk to them about the different things we do from either a customer experience perspective or how we respond to events,” Ms Pfeffer says.

The program’s success is evident in its retention rate. About 70% of those who have started the program in the past five years are still with the company. Ms Pfeffer says several factors play into this, including the role previous graduate recruits and other employees play in welcoming new members.

“We get lots of volunteers who love being mentors. They love sharing what they know and if you’ve come through the grad program here, you’re pretty connected to it.”

Suncorp’s people, legal and corporate services chief executive Belinda Speirs also emphasises the role graduates play in recruitment.

“We utilised the best asset we have – our current and previous graduates – to speak directly to university students … at events or through digital and social channels, showcasing what it’s actually like to work here,” she says.

In a decade working at Suncorp, across two stints, Ms Pfeffer says she and her team have refined their approach to best empower graduates in their roles.

“We’ve learnt that it’s better that learning happens naturally over the first six months, where they … get exposure to more things,” she says. “There’s a lot of job shadowing that happens … going to a lot of meetings to just hear what people are talking about and learning through osmosis.

“What we know is that it’s not useful to just put them in a room for a week and throw everything at them. It just doesn’t sink in that way and leads to cognitive overload.”

But when disaster strikes, that approach is not always possible. Following Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the insurer had to allocate graduates – including from its underwriting department – to its claims team to help manage the outstanding number of lodgements.

Queensland commercial underwriting executive manager Kate Turner says while it was not ideal, the situation gave the recruits “great exposure early on”.

“While [the cyclone] was catastrophic from a customer point of view … it was really good for a graduate to see what our purpose is and where it’s coming into effect,” Ms Turner tells Insurance News. “They were assisting our customers when it mattered most and got a first-hand view of what it is they’re actually doing and what it means at the end of the day.”

Developing standout talent has become a focus for the industry as it addresses an ageing workforce. Last year, the Insurance Council of Australia outlined a six-year talent road map in preparation for the potential departure of 30% of all industry professionals who reach retirement age in the next five years.

“We’ve had these ‘oracles’ of insurance – people who have been around forever and a day, back when we were handwriting insurance policies,” Ms Turner says.

“Now, we’re getting to a position, certainly over the past five years of recruiting, that there is an absolute talent shortage in Queensland.

“And if people leave, you’re searching backwards within that same pool again.”

Ms Turner says that as this crisis continues, graduate programs such as Suncorp’s will become increasingly vital.

“Underwriting is an art form in itself. It’s an expert field. You can’t pull someone off the street, put them in a role and expect within three months they’ll hit the ground running. It doesn’t work like that. It takes years.”

Ms Pfeffer adds the program is “part of an investment into the future to make sure that … you’re not always having to try to attract people from other organisations. That you also have a pipeline of people coming through who understand the business and are happy to stay with it.”

Much has also been made of the role artificial intelligence will play for the next generation of workers. Some experts predict the technology could spell trouble for graduates, as employers choose to automate tasks traditionally performed by young professionals.

For Ms Pfeffer, AI is “something to work alongside of … not something that’s necessarily replacing anything.

“We’re still always going to need people in our business. Will our roles evolve a little bit? Of course they will.

“But that means we can do some more interesting and exciting stuff.”

She draws parallels between the technology and the way the company utilised social media in recent years to promote its brand to students.

“We’re now seeing the results of that, and part of it was also just trying to elevate students’ awareness and knowledge of the insurance industry in general and the types of careers that are available to them.”

Studying risk, from lab to liability

Like many in the industry, Alexia Branson Wu’s journey to insurance followed an unconventional path.

After completing a degree in biology and immunology at the Australian National University, she grew disillusioned at the idea of spending her career inside a laboratory. Now working in liability underwriting, Ms Wu says she has been surprised at the ways her post relates to her background.

“Being stuck in a lab looking at viruses, it’s not insurance, but there are crossovers,” she says.

“The role takes a lot of risk analysis associated with your customer, and that correlates a lot with what I did back in university, where I was making risk assessments on different experiments I had done.”

Shortly after starting her first full-time graduate job, Ms Wu was assigned to the claims team to help manage incidents related to Cyclone Alfred. She says the experience was “challenging but fulfilling”.

“It was a lot on the feet, learning in a quick situation … I realised there’s so much more to insurance than just underwriting.”

She has since returned to underwriting, where – after a “nerve-racking” couple of weeks – she is now feeling comfortable, while still excited.

“I was afraid there were going to be lots of unknown words or topics being thrown at me. But that’s where my team and the senior members really helped.

“They’ve given me knowledge bit by bit and made an environment safe enough for me to take the initiative to ask questions without being afraid of being wrong.”