Preparing for the future is critical in the rapidly changing insurance and reinsurance industry.

That’s why the industry needs to prioritise allocating its limited resources to ensure that there is a pool of talent in place to contribute – otherwise, the industry’s very future will be jeopardised. The need for a concerted approach to talent recruitment, mentoring, and development in the insurance and reinsurance industries must be met.

To discuss this further, Deepesh Patel, Editorial Director at Trade Finance Global (TFG), sat down with Marilyn Blattner-Hoyle, Global Head of Trade Finance, Trade Credit & Working Capital Solutions at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, at the 50th annual conference of the International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA) held in Limassol, Cyprus.

Adapting recruiting practices to attract top talent into trade finance

The industry is always on the lookout to attract and develop top talent. Empowering teams to achieve the organisation’s purpose often inspires top talent. At Swiss Re, for instance, we find our teams connect in particular with the purpose of contributing to global resilience. For our trade finance team, that means partnering specifically on the risks that support global trade. This can mean better access to trade financing, across emerging and developed markets. Connecting this purpose to the topic of empowerment is where we see our teams thrive. The intention is to build and maintain a fail-safe environment that enables team members to develop in their various roles and across their career paths. 

Blattner-Hoyle said, “We see the dividends of investing in our team’s development and empowerment. This can be evidenced in how well the team develops solutions with clients and brokers who sit at our core. With these client and broker partners, we also ensure that trade finance gets to the market segments, purposes like ESG, and/or countries that need it while, of course, growing a profitable business.”

Despite a number of highly skilled and visible leaders, the trade finance industry is preparing for an upcoming retirement gap. This makes it crucial for organisations to ensure capability and experience amongst incoming talent, also reflecting the client base and changing world we work in.  

We are focusing on transferring existing skillsets as well as building capabilities needed for the future such as in respect of topics like data-driven underwriting, AI, and evolving product structures.  Unbiased systems can be used to achieve this, helping companies figure out optimal approaches to development, promotions, and recruitment as well as creating an environment that creates a complementary team. Recruitment and staff development objectives can be reflected in modes of questioning and interview style to ensure that personal biases do not affect the talent screening and selection process.

Blattner-Hoyle said “I’m proud of the diversity of the trade finance team at Swiss Re which we built by promoting from within and also hiring complementary skillsets and backgrounds. Team make-up is a big factor in the successful build-out of the business, how we serve our clients and brokers, now and as the landscape evolves”

Mentoring and developing talent

Mentorship and sponsorship are critical in this regard. Blattner-Hoyle said, “At any moment, I try to mentor, say, maybe five people in the industry. Often the first thing I ask them is, what inspires you to be in this industry? What do you want to do? I try empower around that.

“Often, that’s where purpose comes in. These coaching conversations also inspire me on how we can shift our “traditional” ways to retain and attract such talent.”

Companies should emphasise building resilience among team members in the mentoring and development process. Setbacks in the workplace are inevitable, so it’s useful to help the team prepare to handle failure at work and feedback that may sometimes come from clients, peers, managers etc. In this vein, ensuring team members have a manageable work-life balance contributes significantly to wellbeing and mental health. AI may help with this topic too.      

Building resilience in people and fail-safe environments

The first step is listening and understanding our team members. Additionally, we find that making them feel almost akin to a business owner creates a good base for this environment. This would usually propel them to approach their tasks without the fear of failure, knowing that they are valued and trusted. 

Team members need to know early in their careers that they do not need to have answers to every challenge they are confronted with at work, but would rather be valued for their contributions to thought processes, proposing constructive ideas or technological inputs around enhancing existing products or creating new ones. Often a first failure leads to the best outcome in the next move. 

Blattner-Hoyle said, “It’s about making people feel welcome to speak up, to give their ideas, right from the beginning. It’s also building a feedback culture and making it okay to give and receive feedback all the time.” Regular one-to-one monthly sessions, for instance, are a means to establishing this.     

The potential of AI in credit insurance

Experimenting with AI could enhance productivity in this field. Within the Swiss Re trade finance team, for instance, solutions like Microsoft Copilot, an AI chatbot, have been deployed. Microsoft Copilot helps record minutes of meetings and produces quality transcripts. It can also respond to queries based on meetings recorded by it, saving team-hours.

Blattner-Hoyle said, “We are also looking into how can we augment credit analysis using AI, which is important to us. As you know, a big piece of our business is evaluating credit risk”. 

There is a lot of expectation about the benefits that can be derived from using AI in the credit processing space. These are early days, however; early adopters of this technology are learning how best to harness it to their advantage.     

There is a place for the union between the benefits offered by AI and the unique contributions that people bring to the table. AI can, for example, be configured to produce speech, but our experiences so far show that it may lack the “human touch.” 

Despite the huge productivity gains AI can offer, the contributions of a human brain will never lose value. Training teams and minds around the benefits of AI and the biases that it brings is key to maximising its benefits. 

Swiss Re has trialled AI for a variety of tasks to learn as much as possible about the biases that could come with its use. For example, they use an AI-driven solution to turn thousands of news articles into targeted and actionable early warning signals across our portfolio via updated credit scores. This type of news data allows the underwriters to compare what AI produces compared to what they would have found using their usual tools. The intention is to ensure that observed biases are known and eliminated where possible or factored into a task when combined with human input to avoid being taken down the wrong path. This is journey. 

Why consider entering the trade finance industry?

Trade finance is tangible because trade finance solutions help real people, real companies, real services, and real economies. By providing solutions that facilitate the completion of trade finance transactions, organisations not only contribute to making the world more resilient but also create jobs and reduce poverty. 

Blattner-Hoyle summarised, “This amazing purpose drives the passion with which Swiss Re’s closely knitted group provides deals and solutions to its clients and brokers every day, and we have so much fun doing it. Great deals and great purpose – everyone should come to trade finance.”