You can’t recruit your way out of the insurance pricing talent gap
Insurance pricing has quietly become one of the most strategically important (and most talent-constrained) functions in the market.
Regulatory change, data availability, new tools, and competitive pressure mean pricing teams are expected to do more analysis, more often, with higher scrutiny than ever before.
Most organisations are still trying to solve that with traditional hiring models. That’s why they’re stuck.
The problem
Time-to-hire and contractor day rates in pricing
Pricing roles are niche, technical and slow to fill. The best people are already in work, guarded by notice periods and counteroffers. Vacant seats drag on for months, slowing reprices and change projects. To plug the gap, teams lean on contractors – but specialist day rates are high, knowledge walks out the door at the end of the contract, and you’re permanently “renting” capability.
Ageing workforce + thin graduate pipeline in insurance
Insurance pricing is still built on a relatively small pool of experienced practitioners. Many are mid- to late-career, with limited structured succession behind them. Meanwhile, most high-potential graduates are being pulled towards technology, big-brand data roles, or wider consulting. Traditional insurance grad schemes struggle to compete on proposition, learning, or perceived career velocity.
Economic pressure → cautious headcount, rising workload
Underwriting and pricing need to respond quickly to market shifts, regulation, and portfolio performance – but every new permanent head is a political and budget decision. The result: frozen or tightly controlled headcount, while the volume of work, model complexity, and governance expectations all trend upwards. Teams end up stretched, reactive, and reliant on a handful of key individuals.
The old answer: recruitment, contractors, graduate schemes
For years, pricing leaders have had three levers:
Recruitment:
Hire experienced pricing analysts and actuaries from competitors or adjacent roles. This can work – but it’s slow, expensive, and often just moves the skills gap around the market rather than closing it. You gain capability only if someone else loses it.
Contractors & consultancies:
Bring in external expertise to deliver projects or fill short-term gaps. Useful for spikes in demand, but high cost and little long-term resilience. When the engagement ends, so does your capacity and much of your embedded knowledge.
Traditional graduate schemes:
Hire bright grads and hope they grow into pricing professionals over several years. Yet most generic programmes aren’t designed around modern pricing tools, data workflows, or regulatory realities. Graduates often rotate away just as they become useful, or they don’t see a clear pricing career narrative and move on.
These approaches are all variations on the same theme: trying to buy fully formed pricing capability in a market where it simply doesn’t exist at the scale you need.
They address vacancies, not the underlying capability problem.
The new answer: pricing capability creation
Instead of fighting over a shrinking pool of experienced specialists, leading organisations are shifting to pricing capability creation – deliberately building the next generation of pricing talent around the skills, tools, and behaviours they actually need.
At FlarePeople, we call this model Recruit–Train–Deploy (RTD):
We recruit high-potential people from diverse backgrounds, intensely train them in real-world insurance pricing, then deploy them into your team as pricing-ready analysts.
You’re not just filling seats. You’re building a pipeline of capability that compounds year after year.
The Pathfinders model: Recruit → Train → Deploy
Think of Pathfinders as a dedicated engine for growing pricing talent, built purely for the insurance sector.
1. Recruit – finding the right potential
We source candidates from three targeted pathways:
Graduates & early careers with strong analytical foundations and real appetite for pricing and insurance.
Ex-forces talent bringing discipline, structured thinking, and operational focus, ready to channel that into data and decision-making.
Career returners with prior analytical or commercial experience, looking to re-enter high-value work with the right support.
All candidates are selected for aptitude, learning agility, and communication – not just technical buzzwords on a CV.
2. Train – turning potential into pricing-ready talent
Before they ever join your team, Pathfinders complete an intensive Academy focused on:
Insurance and pricing fundamentals
GLMs, rating, and pricing analytics
Tools like Radar and modern data workflows
Python and broader analytical skills
Governance, documentation, and communication with underwriters and stakeholders
Training is built around real pricing scenarios, not abstract exercises. By the time a Pathfinder lands with you, they understand where pricing sits in the value chain and how their work affects portfolio performance.
3. Deploy – embedding capability in your team
After the Academy, Pathfinders join your pricing team as deployed analysts:
They plug into BAU repricing, change initiatives, or pricing transformation projects.
They’re supported with ongoing coaching and development so their capability continues to grow.
You get continuity: they stay long enough to build context, relationships, and domain depth.
The result is a repeatable pipeline of pricing talent: people who arrive already trained for your world and continue to develop while contributing meaningful work.
What this means for pricing leaders
If you’re responsible for pricing, you don’t just need “more heads”. You need:
A steady stream of analysts who can genuinely handle modern pricing work.
Reduced dependency on expensive, short-term fixes.
A way to future-proof your team against retirement, attrition, and market scarcity.
You won’t get there by playing the same recruitment game as every other insurer.
You get there by creating capability – systematically, deliberately, and at scale.
That’s what Pathfinders™ is designed to do.
Let’s talk
At FlarePeople, we design and run the Pathfinders™ Academy specifically for insurance pricing teams. If you are an insurance pricing leader and are interested in learning more about how the Pathfinders™ Academy can support your hiring needs this year, let’s talk.
Visit FlarePeople to explore what a pricing talent engine could look like in your organisation or contact us: