Briefing: Do not sleepwalk into the knowledge transfer risk

On 24 March 2026, the Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC) issued its Annual Skills Report 2026 – subtitled Skills gaps: a moving target.

Within this report, the FSSC expressed concern that financial services firms are not sufficiently addressing the scale of the skills challenge the sector is facing. It proposed strategic workforce planning as a vitally important approach that could help address this specific issue.

The majority of workforce planning projects, however, centre on the need to attract the next generation into the insurance profession.

At the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), we have already recognised the importance of this and have a series of existing initiatives in place – or in development – that are geared towards driving up the volume of young talent coming into the profession.

But, for the insurance profession to truly close its talent gap and raise awareness of possible career routes to young talent, there is a need to retain and reskill the existing workforce.

The aforementioned FSSC report suggested that reskilling and upskilling across financial services remains stable when compared to previous years, but it is not keeping pace with accelerating market change.

Another dimension to the skills and talent gap in UK general insurance (UKGI) is that somewhere in the region of 50% of the current workforce could retire in the next 15 years.

An ageing workforce is not a new problem for UKGI – we have been talking about it for years. It sits in most businesses’ people strategies, appears in talent dashboards and is usually paired with a focus on apprenticeships and early careers.

However, the challenge is no longer simply about having enough people in the insurance profession. It is also about whether the capability that underpins decision‑making is leaving faster than it can be replaced.

This risk is not spread evenly across UKGI’s workforce. It is likely to be heavily concentrated in roles where judgement, experience and context matter more than process. For example, in senior underwriting roles – especially concerning complex and specialty lines – pricing teams where technical skill is only half the story, large loss and specialist claims functions, as well as technical leadership positions in risk and compliance.

These are roles where competence is built over time, through exposure to ambiguity and consequence. Those skills are gained with experience – it is not as easy to learn them properly from a process map or a policy document.

And yet this is exactly where the workforce profile is oldest and where replacement pipelines are potentially thinnest.

A core business risk

Insurance has always relied on tacit knowledge – the kind that is picked up by seeing things go wrong, experiencing cycles turning and learning which rules matter when they conflict with others.

Those with senior experience are likely to have built this know-how up through gradual exposure – routine cases first, then complexity, then ownership.

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have removed much of the routine complexity that once acted as a training ground for staff. Entry level roles are now faster, narrower and more transactional. At the same time, the most complex decisions are increasingly protected and concentrated at the top.

Most insurers will have succession plans – however, too often, these formats assume that knowledge can be documented, rather than needing to be demonstrated to new appointees.

Judgement does not transfer through job titles – it transfers through making decisions with consequences, supported and challenged by colleagues who already carry relevant experience.

Without securing such experience driven expertise, firms effectively risk relying on the hope that knowledge regenerates on its own. But hope is not a business strategy.

Instead, UKGI should be treating ageing capability in the same way as it treats technological change or regulatory reform, enabling different questions to be asked. This could include, for example:

• Where does the organisation rely on a small number of experienced decision‑makers?
• Which automated processes have accidentally removed learning opportunities?
• How resilient are underwriting, pricing or claims decisions if one or two key individuals were to leave suddenly?
• Are we creating successors – or just replacements?

Viewed like this, the risk potentially becomes much clearer – and much harder to ignore.

This is not simply a human resources problem – it is a core business risk. Insurance depends on knowledge, experience, insight and professional judgement. When that is eroded, the impact might not show up immediately – it perhaps will become clearer later on, evident in weaker decisions and greater fragility.

The biggest workforce risk facing insurance is not retirement. It is sleepwalking into a loss of knowledge and experience and only realising the potency of this problem once outcomes start to deteriorate.