More from the GIRO Conference: Niamh Carabine's highlights

It was a great first time at the IFoA GIRO Conference for me last week, along with our general insurance team. In particular, I really enjoyed meeting so many of the candidates that I have spoken with over my first six months at Eames, and even connecting with some new ones. Here are my key observations from my first conference.

Hiring tough at nearly and newly qualified level

From our conversations and the movement we’ve seen in the market over the last year, it’s really tough hiring at the nearly and newly qualified level. Everyone’s looking to recruit from a limited talent pool, which is pushing salaries to the top banding for this level as there is limited movement in this area of the market. If clients have the flexibility to avoid hiring at this level, we’d advise them to try to hire at a level above or a level below, where there is more available talent.

Pricing the focus for transformation

Pricing transformations seem to be the focus for a lot of general insurers, and candidates are interested in hearing about companies that are moving people from pricing into reserving, rather than the other way round.

The current emphasis on pricing is backed up by the results of our Actuarial UK Skills and Workplace Attitudes Survey, conducted earlier in the year. Pricing transformation, selected by 47.9% of respondents, was the most common kind of transformation actuaries have been involved with in their career, followed by reserving transformation (36.1%) and capital modelling migrations and builds (23.7%). As the majority of UK firms shift their focus to pricing, we would expect this to continue to be the subject of their transformation efforts over the next year.

Get in touch with us

This year’s conference gave us a great chance to connect with so many actuarial professionals and keep up to date and what’s happening in the industry. If you want to know more about the themes that came at the conference, are keen to find your next hire or your next role in general insurance, or want to request a copy of our Actuarial UK Skills and Workplace Attitudes Survey, then I’d love to hear from you.