Young brokers taking part in a series of workshops for the London & International Insurance Brokers’ Association are overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining face-to-face trading with underwriters as their main means of interaction.

97% of young brokers said they wanted their working life to comprise at least 50% face-to-face trading with underwriters while half wanted it to be predominantly face-to-face.

The young brokers also highlighted their preference to do business in the more traditional way, in the Lloyd’s Underwriting Room, and expressed their disappointment at the lack of underwriters at the box, reporting attendance on just Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Further, attendance rotas circulated by insurers on Sunday were "often unfulfilled", the young brokers claimed.

Jason Collins, who led the workshops and wrote the foreword to the report, said: “The message from young brokers is a stark one. They want to trade face-to-face; they want to build the relationships that would underpin that; and they want to do this in a Room restored to its position as a true trading floor where decisions are made.

“The London market is a community and communities need a focal point – like a school or a church. In the London insurance market that focal point always has been and should be the Underwriting Room. A vibrant room attracts talent. It is an exciting, invigorating place to do business – and it fosters innovation.”

A report published earlier this month by the CII’s New Generation programme struck similar notes on the need for better training and mentoring programmes in a post-pandemic world (not to mention a world in which insurance business is conducted beyond London).

The 'new normal’ represents a significant shift in the amount of time spent working in traditional office spaces. Pre-pandemic, 90% of the CII's survey respondents attended the office 4 times a week or more. Now, 86% are now attending the office 3 times a week or less. Less than 5% now attend the office 5 days a week.

The survey asked respondents to rate the impact of hybrid working on different areas of their working life, using a scale ranging from ‘very negative’ to ‘very positive’. Over 33% of respondents felt that hybrid working has either a ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ impact on their access to line managers, due to the convenience of online meetings. Hybrid working was also shown to be overwhelmingly beneficial to work-life balance, with nearly 80% of respondents identifying a positive impact and just 14% identifying a negative.

It is clear that a balance is to be struck between face-to-face interaction, digital and levelling-up agendas and the work-life balance goals that industry professionals – and their employers – have come to value so highly in the post-Covid era.

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