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Latest Insurance Talent Perspectives

Building and Maintaining a Strong Employer Brand

In today’s competitive labor market, a strong employer brand is a key differentiator in recruiting top talent, reducing costs, enhancing the candidate pool, and retaining high performers by instilling pride in their roles and company. 

View our latest white paper for tips to ensure your company represents itself as an employer of choice.

Q3 2024 Insurance Labor Market Study Results

The Jacobson Group and Aon conduct a Semi-Annual Insurance Labor Market Study to examine industry hiring and revenue trends and projections. The findings of our Q3 2024 iteration reflect a relatively stable labor market, with modest job growth.

Download the results to explore 2024’s staffing forecasts and hiring plans for the insurance industry.

Combatting the Finance and Accounting Talent Shortage

Faced with a shallowing pool of emerging talent and a workforce nearing retirement, finding qualified accounting and finance professionals has been an intensifying challenge for the industry. A comprehensive multi-prong approach is necessary to cultivate a workforce that can meet evolving demands and ensure operational continuity.

Read our blog post for insights on staying ahead of the growing finance and accounting talent crisis.

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GDP Growth and the Return of Employment

Wall Street is celebrating today. The strongest GDP growth in two years has the bulls battling back after a rough four days. Unfortunately, the latest from the BLS wasn’t quite as positive, as the preliminary figures show another 530,000 people filed new unemployment insurance claims last week. The better news that was found in the continuing claims data is viewed skeptically, as the source of this data is state unemployment rolls; so those who have been unemployed long enough to have exhausted all of their state benefits are no longer counted (these individuals continue to receive unemployment benefits from the federal government). Staffing firms are harbingers of the future. If you are interested in the relationship between staffing and the economy, the American Staffing Association published a landmark study back in June. Basically, the study found: A very high correlation between GDP growth and temporary staffing Temporary staffing growth to be a coincident indicator of GDP growth Temporary staffing to be a strong two quarter leading indicator of nonfarm employment growth Given the above, you will not be surprised to hear that I am often asked how we are doing. In the eight years leading up to and including 2008, The Jacobson Group’s revenues grew at a compound annual rate of 32 percent, landing us on the list of fastest-growing staffing firms for two of the past three years. Needless to say, this year has been a bit more of a challenge. That said, our temporary staffing business units all saw a marked increase in activity in September and October. Furthermore, our activity levels seem to be accelerating. I hesitate to read too much about the general economy. In our experience, the insurance industry is not representative of the entire market and our firm is only partially representative of the insurance industry. However, based upon the strength of the increase in demand, I am optimistic that we are seeing an inflection point. I also have heard recent optimism from others in the more general areas of the staffing community. Given that, if the ASA study relationships hold up, we could see a sharp uptick in employment come early 2010. No doubt, we all would smile at that news. I’ll keep you posted.

MMSEA Section 111: Reporting Requirements for Non-Group Health Plans

I’ll apologize upfront for the acronyms – they are direct from CMS. As most of you are aware, the implementation of Medicare Secondary Payer Mandatory Reporting for liability insurance (including self-insurance), no-fault insurance and workers’ compensation is well under way. The registration period for NGHP on the Coordination of Benefits Secure Website (COBSW) began on May 1st, and hopefully by now all Responsible Reporting Entities (RRE) are registered and ready to begin the Claim File Testing process on January 1st. While the first Claim Input Files are not due until the second quarter of 2010, the reporting requirements extend to claims for which ongoing responsibility for medicals (ORM) exists as of July 1, 2009. We are hearing a wide range of reactions to the upcoming reporting requirements and changes to Medicare resources. While we know that Section 111 will have some sort of impact on every GL, WC, and auto carrier and all TPAs, there seems to be little consensus as to the size and breadth of the impact. I would love to hear from you - How are you preparing your staff to handle the upcoming requirements? Will your systems support the new processes? Are you anticipating increased workload to identify ORM claimants who are or may soon be Medicare beneficiaries? How will your settlement process change?

The Right Healthcare Reform?

Early last year, as the presidential primary election campaigns heated up, we began to hear the details of the various healthcare proposals put forth by the different candidates. While they varied in approach, structure and cost, they all were focused around a few principle objectives: Slow Down Cost Growth Expand Coverage Improve Outcomes These objectives have not changed. I would like to take a minute to delve into each of these objectives, so we understand the issues that each attempts to ameliorate. 1. Slow Down Cost Growth According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average annual increase in the total cost of healthcare from 1965-2005 was 4.9% compared to average GDP growth over that same period of 2.1%. While this is clearly alarming and must be dealt with, it should also be looked at in the correct context. During that same period, the median age in this country increased from 28.1 years to 36.2 years. While current projections show that median age will continue to increase in the future, the rate of this increase is actually slowing dramatically – the census bureau expects the median age to level out around 39.0 years by 2030. This deceleration in population aging should act as cost growth inhibitor over the intermediate and long term. While this one factor will not in itself solve our current cost challenges, it is something worth keeping in mind because the problems may not be quite as daunting as they seem. 2. Expand Coverage There are two related issues that need to be solved. The first is hampered access to preventative and wellness care by the uninsured population. The second is financial ruin that uninsured and underinsured families face when an unexpected healthcare emergency arises. 3. Improve Outcomes The shortcomings of our system have been well-documented. I am not going to rehash them all here but clearly, when it comes to the metrics that all of us would agree are important, our system has room for improvement. Root Cause So what are the causes of these issues that we face? We have heard many ideas from many players and most of these ideas have merit. I argue, however, that many of these ‘causes’ are not causes, but rather symptoms of the problem. For instance, the ARRA included $19B for investments in health information technology, aimed exclusively at healthcare providers. The idea behind this subsidy was that the provider industry needed a kick-start to invest in technology – and that investment would lead to efficiency gains. Why is it that this huge industry needs government money to invest in technology where every other industry does so via reinvestment of revenue? I postulate that healthcare providers are rational economic players and, generally, will make decisions that are economically correct for their own interests. The reason that information technology dominates every other industry is economic Darwinism – only the strongest (most efficient) organizations survive and information technology is a key to efficiency. Quite simply, there is no economic competition for the consumer among healthcare providers and this structure provides a lack of economic incentives. The symptoms of this problem are seen everywhere in our healthcare system: in the 60-minute waiting room delays for a ‘scheduled’ appointment, in the uncoordinated approach to care among providers focused on the same patient, in the ridiculously high ‘retail price’ of hospital stays, and mostly in the runaway cost of care. If we solve the problem of missing consumerism, we make a huge impact on the cost of care and, if done right, we also make great strides towards improved care. Expanded coverage will follow. I am not suggesting that consumerism alone will bring us all the way to the ideal. There are no doubt other issues that need to be solved, including the tort system and the impacts it has on defensive medicine. However, consumerism is the best tool we have to get most of the way there. The Wrong Focus Somehow the health insurance industry has become the focus of upcoming changes. This is ironic given the fact that our industry has been one of the very few inhibitors of cost growth over the past twenty years. Attempting to solve the healthcare issues by reforming insurers is akin to creating Wal-Mart reform because the cost of food has gone up. It is counterproductive. Solution The only way to solve our healthcare challenges is to attack the problem by injecting consumerism into the process. Interestingly, with the help of the government, our industry has made great strides over the past several years. The latest generation of Consumer Directed Health Plans, greatly strengthened by the 2004 creation of Health Savings Accounts, is just now getting consumers comfortable with taking some control of the economic decisions involved in healthcare. Moreover, these plans are economically encouraging Americans to make better lifestyle decisions that will have a dramatic positive effect on our healthcare system. What is missing from the current solution set is significant. There is a massive knowledge gap between providers and consumers that makes consumerism extremely difficult. This is where government can step in and add value to the process. By defining standards for outcomes, measures of efficiency and even customer satisfaction, and by then measuring providers against those standards, the government could provide the keystone to a consumer-driven healthcare system.

Welcome to The Jacobson Group Blog!

Welcome to The Jacobson Group blog! Thank you for taking the time to explore our website and for your interest in our industry perspective. TJG (as we call ourselves internally) sits in an interesting position. Because of the depth of services that we offer to a relatively narrow group of industries – health insurance, property and casualty insurance, and life and disability insurance – we end up talking to a whole bunch of people at every level of the industry. Our clients range from Claims Managers to Chief Claims Officers, from Call Center Supervisors to COOs, from Accounting Managers to CFOs – you get the idea. Our candidate pool is just as diverse: actuaries, underwriters, statutory and GAAP accountants, claims people, finance people, and even the occasional economist. What this all means is that we have daily, in-depth conversations with professionals representing virtually all perspectives within our industries. These conversations create an incredibly deep pool of knowledge within TJG, and we feel it is our duty to leverage that knowledge to provide holistic insight back to the industries we serve. We do that in a variety of ways and this blog aspires to be one of them. I personally hope that you enjoy this forum. We will try to address a new topic biweekly. We also hope to hear back from members of our industries. Give us your perspective on the topics we discuss – help add to our knowledge base! I can be reached directly at [email protected] and would love to hear suggested discussion topics for future posts.