Industry Pipeline to Diversity Needs Construction Now

The president of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter Society says the insurance industry needs to diversify its ranks, adding more young people and minorities, and wants his organization to lead the charge.

At a recent meeting of the Maryland chapter of the CPCU Society, new president Marvin Kelly, executive director of the Texas Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association, said the industry is “challenged” and needs to make up for lost time.

“We have a good majority of individuals who are seniors, so they’ve been in [the industry] for 20, 30, 40 years and we don’t have a pipeline of young people coming in,” Kelly, 51, said. “And we don’t have a lot of diversity, but throughout the United States, you have states like California, Texas and Hawaii that have large immigrant populations coming into those areas and we haven’t penetrated that because we don’t have individuals that understand that culture. So I think we started out late.”

A 27-year veteran of the industry, Kelly graduated in 1979 from the University of Hartford with a degree in insurance. He went on to become the first black underwriter hired by Transamerica Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn. and in September, became the first minority president in the 65-year history of the CPCU Society.

The CPCU Society’s recent demographic study of its membership found that more than 84% are over the age of 40, Kelly said. It also found 1.9% are African-Americans, 1.7% are Hispanic and 1.4% are Asian.

“Now I’m not an actuary, but I think that’s low,” Kelly said. “What I’m trying to do is create an environment to get more young people and a more diverse group of individuals participating in insurance so it becomes the norm versus the exception.”

Kelly is proposing new programs for the CPCU Society and its members.

One is a 30-year-old program called Project InVEST, supported by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, which involves professionals going to high schools and colleges teaching them about the industry as well as job shadowing at insurance agencies.

“High school and college students really don’t understand the opportunities in insurance,” Kelly said. “When they think of insurance, they think of sales, but it is more broad-based than that and covers a spectrum of all kinds of jobs and opportunities.”

As the past-president of the CPCU Society’s Central Texas chapter, Kelly started the InVEST program at Huston-Tillotson University, a historically black university, and wants to spread that success across the country.

Another program would bring educators and those in the insurance industry together to see how to collaborate on programs in colleges and universities, including utilizing professionals as teachers. Kelly helped facilitate the Texas Department of Insurance Academy, which did just this recently and thinks the model can work elsewhere.

“The commissioner [in Texas] is doing it because he recognizes the demographics are changing,” Kelly said. “In Texas, Hispanics are the largest ethnic group, but are underrepresented in insurance companies as the biggest market, so we have not done a good job to diversify.”

Kelly has also opened up this year’s annual meeting to members outside of the CPCU Society in a further effort to not only introduce them to the designation, but also get them on-board with his theme of “embracing change.”

This article originally appeared in the December 2008 edition of Insurance & Financial Advisor. 

By Keith L. Martin, Insurance & Financial Advisor