What if irrelevance, rather than climate/cyber/terrorism, is the real risk to insurance?

For an industry built on risk, insurance hasn’t done a great job of spotting its own.

Across the global specialty and reinsurance markets, firms are grappling with squeezed margins, increased regulation and relentless consolidation. Products are becoming harder to differentiate and client loyalty is waning. And yet the industry’s collective muscle memory still resists one of the most proven tools for competitive advantage: strategic marketing.

The comfort trap

Insurance is one of the oldest industries in the world. It’s also one of the slowest to change. Clayton Christensen argued in The Innovator’s Dilemma, that market leaders often fail not because they lack resources, but because they’ve succeeded under conditions that no longer exist -  though they have some motivation to innovate, they also have a strong disincentive from doing so as new products will undermine their existing ones

The insurance model ‘worked’ for centuries. Relationships ruled and deals were done face-to-face. A few well-placed lunch meetings could yield millions in premium. Brand was often invisible and marketing was just the brolly’s and brochures department.

But the model is shifting and the product is commoditising. Clients are savvier and have more options. Critically, the next generation, both of clients and talent, doesn’t buy into the mystique of the market in the same way. If they don’t see what makes your firm different, they assume it isn’t.

Commoditisation and convergence

When every firm is selling broadly the same thing, give or take a coverage extension, differentiation becomes harder - it also becomes more important. M&A has reduced the number of players, but not the intensity of competition. In many segments, buyers are choosing between three to five major brokers or carriers, all pitching similar capabilities.

This is where Marketing comes in. Not as a roll-it-in-glitter exercise, but as a strategic lever. Brand, positioning, content, design and storytelling are not surface-level activities, in modern industries, they are tools of influence, recall and trust. The reason you choose this bank over that one. The reason someone applies to this employer and not the other.

And yet in insurance, we continue to treat marketing like a peripheral cost centre.

The talent cliff

Perhaps the starkest warning sign isn’t coming from clients, but from future colleagues. The 2024 Insurindex Employer Brand Index showed that while there are standouts, many global insurance brands struggle to appeal to young talent. Separate studies from Deloitte, PwC and insurance brand agency Free, show Gen Z and millennial professionals want purpose, flexibility and cultural alignment.

In industries like tech or FMCG, employer brand is considered a core part of talent strategy. In insurance? It’s still rare to find a marketing function directly responsible for recruitment campaigns, culture comms or internal storytelling. Which is staggering, because we’re about to lose a big chunk of our workforce to retirement and struggle to replace them.

The opportunity

The upside is we’re not starting from zero. Some firms are waking up. They’re investing in distinctive positioning (phenomenal work from Beazley and Howden right now that I’ll come back to another time). They’re using brand to build trust and content to educate and influence. They're taking lessons from consumer marketing and adapting them to an industry with unique complexity.

If insurance wants to stay relevant,  not just compliant or capitalised, but genuinely competitive, it needs to embrace marketing not as decoration, but as direction.

It’s time we stop treating marketing like colouring in.

What role does it play in your insurance business?

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This is the first in a six part series where I plan to explore why 'insurance needs marketing more than ever'.