The month of July saw one webinar delivered by #YourIIG, sponsored by iTOO Special Risks and facilitated by Council Members Shaazia Khan & Pearl Kgwete, this Wisdom Wednesday Webinar tackled one of the industry’s most pressing strategic challenges:
How do we attract, include, and retain the talent needed to sustain insurance’s role as a backbone of South Africa’s economic resilience?
Our guest of speakers took the participants through an online panel-style discussion. Both Tovè Sithole (Head: Talent & Brand, iTOO Special Risks) and Vanessa Mathuto Kodisang (Strategic Human Capital Leader, Hollard Australia) brought over 30 combined years of human capital experience to a conversation that was candid, practical, and long overdue.
Attracting Talent in a Competitive Market
Insurance competes for talent against technology, finance, and consulting — industries with stronger brand visibility among young professionals. The session identified several concrete mechanisms the industry can deploy to close this gap:
- Campus and school engagement: Structured partnerships with universities and FET colleges — including bursaries, internship pipelines, and curriculum collaboration — create early brand affinity and widen the intake pool beyond traditional commerce faculties.
- Repositioning the value proposition: Insurance offers intellectual depth, career longevity, and genuine societal impact. The industry needs to say this louder and more authentically — particularly to candidates from underrepresented communities who may not see themselves reflected in how the sector presents itself.
- Non-traditional hiring: Deliberately recruiting from adjacent disciplines — data science, engineering, behavioural economics, public health — brings cognitive diversity that strengthens underwriting, product design, and client engagement.
- Visible sponsorship and mentorship: Formalised mentorship and sponsorship programmes, where senior leaders actively advocate for emerging talent in rooms where decisions are made, are among the highest-impact interventions available to any organisation.
Keeping People: Purpose as Retention
Attraction without retention is expensive and demoralising. The session was clear that the most powerful retention tool available to the insurance industry is one it underuses: purpose. Insurance is not a passive financial product — it is the mechanism through which individuals recover from loss, businesses survive disruption, and economies absorb shock. In South Africa, where catastrophic events — from floods to civil unrest — have tested communities in recent years, the industry’s role in enabling recovery and sustaining economic participation is profound and concrete.
The discussion focused on organisations which connect their people to this purpose — through storytelling, through claims impact reporting, through community engagement — build a retention advantage that compensation alone cannot replicate. Alongside purpose, the session pointed to inclusive cultures, genuine development investment, and psychological safety as the structural conditions that keep talented people engaged and growing rather than looking for the exit.
The IIG thanks iTOO Special Risks for a session that challenged the audience to think differently about people strategy. The industry’s ability to fulfil its economic mandate depends entirely on the quality and diversity of the people within it — and that starts with intention.
Co-Opt: Education – Insurance Institute of Gauteng
Head: Operations SA – Swiss Re
