Insurance Succession Planning Study Indicates Areas of Opportunity

CHICAGO – The 2022 Insurance Industry Succession Planning Study, conducted by The Jacobson Group, the leading provider of talent to the insurance industry, found 38% of respondents have no formal succession plans in place.

The 2022 Insurance Industry Succession Planning Study was conducted in September 2022 and measured the breadth and depth of carriers’ succession readiness across all organizational levels. Jacobson performed a similar, CEO-focused study in 2014 and 2016, in partnership with Carrier Management.

“For some organizations, succession planning was deprioritized as leaders focused on more immediate challenges brought on by the pandemic,” said Gregory P. Jacobson, co-chief executive officer of The Jacobson Group. “However, in today’s labor market, average tenures are shorter, qualified talent is in high demand and many leaders are reaching retirement. The results of our study provide a benchmark for insurers as they build out their succession plans and prepare individuals to advance into key roles.”

Here are some of the study’s key findings:

  • Roughly one-third of respondents have a written CEO succession plan in place. Nearly half of respondents have written succession plans in place for other C-suite positions and senior leadership roles.
  • Just 6% of respondents describe their organization’s overall succession planning as excellent and 17% of respondents feel their organization’s CEO succession planning is excellent.
  • Seventy-seven percent of carriers say their CEO succession plans include an emergency or interim successor plan, up 14 points from previous studies.
  • It would take 58% of respondents two months or more to have a new CEO in place, up 20 points from 2016.

For more, download the full results summary here. To sign up to participate in future iterations of our succession planning study, follow this link.

About The Jacobson Group:

The Jacobson Group is the leading provider of talent to the insurance industry. For more than 50 years, Jacobson has been connecting organizations with insurance professionals at all levels across all industry verticals. We provide an array of services including executive search, professional recruiting, temporary staffing and subject matter experts. Regardless of the need or situation, Jacobson is the insurance talent solution. Further information is available at jacobsononline.com.

Contact:

The Jacobson Group
Whitney Stephens, Assistant Vice President, Content
+1 (312) 628-0376
wstephens@jacobsononline.com