From hiring headaches to insurance pricing capability
Talk to any senior pricing leader in UK insurance and the themes are remarkably consistent:
Critical pricing roles sitting open for months
Senior pricing analysts, actuaries and managers dragged back into BAU
An ever-growing backlog of “important but not urgent” pricing work
Most organisations respond with the same reflex: “We need to hire more people.”
But after another six months of unfilled roles, agency shortlists and internal reshuffles, it’s worth asking a harder question:
What if this isn’t a hiring problem at all? What if it’s a capability problem?
This article looks to reframe how we think about pricing talent and why the usual levers feel increasingly blunt.
The pricing role has outgrown the old talent model
The traditional profile of a pricing analyst was reasonably clear: strong numeracy, comfort with statistics, decent Excel, maybe some SAS or SQL and an ability to work with underwriters.
Today, that same role often expects:
Experience with GLMs and alternative modelling techniques
Facility with tools like Radar / Earnix / proprietary platforms
Competence in Python or R
Ability to interrogate and improve data pipelines
Comfort working in agile or product-style teams
Confidence working with, and challenging, data and insight in an AI-driven environment
Clear communication of complex ideas to non-technical stakeholders
That’s a very different job to the one many internal processes were designed around. Yet the talent model in many insurers hasn’t shifted much:
Job specs that still read like they were written in 2015
A heavy reliance on “must have 3–5 years of pricing experience”
Graduate schemes that are generic, but not deep in pricing
Limited structured development between “junior analyst” and “future leader”
When the role evolves faster than the way you attract and develop people, a talent gap opens and pricing is right in the middle of that tension.
Three structural pressures making things worse
There are a few forces that quietly compound the problem:
1. Experience inflation
Because the work is more complex and the stakes are higher, teams understandably want people who have “done it before”. That leads to experience inflation:
Roles that could be done by a strong early-career analyst get pitched as “must have several years of pricing experience”
Candidates who might grow quickly never make it past the job description
The same small talent pool of experienced people is hunted by every major insurer and broker
The net effect: the market feels “empty”, even when there is potential talent available.
2. The cost of delay is invisible
Pricing leaders feel the pain of vacancies every day but the business often doesn’t put a number on it.
Unfilled roles don’t just mean empty desks; they show up as:
Projects slipped into the next quarter
Slower response to market changes
Missed opportunities to refine segmentation or rate changes
Increased reliance on interim solutions and multiple agencies scouring the same pricing talent pool
Because the cost is spread across outcomes and timelines, it seldom appears as a single line item, which makes it harder to challenge the status quo.
3. Training is everyone’s job, so it’s nobody’s job
Most teams believe in developing their people. In practice:
Senior analysts pick up ad-hoc coaching
Line managers squeeze in training around delivery
New joiners learn by osmosis and trial-and-error
That can work when growth is modest and turnover is low. It struggles when:
You’re bringing in multiple new joiners a year
Tools and methods are changing
Senior staff are already stretched
The result is an inconsistent learning experience and slower time to productivity.
From vacancies to capability: a different way to think
So what might it look like to treat insurance pricing talent as capability rather than a series of vacancies?
A capability mindset starts with different questions:
Instead of “How do we fill this role?” - ask “How do we produce people who can do this role, on an ongoing basis?”
Instead of “Who can we hire that already knows X tool?” - ask “What learning infrastructure do we need so people can pick up new tools reliably?”
Instead of “How do we keep our best analysts from leaving this year?” - ask “What does a sustainable, attractive career path in pricing look like here?”
That shift pushes you towards system design rather than firefighting.
Here are four components many organisations are starting to explore:
1. Broadening the entry routes into pricing
If you only ever look for “people who have already been pricing analysts”, you’re fishing in the smallest possible pond.
Alternative pathways can include:
STEM graduates with strong problem-solving ability and an appetite for insurance
Ex-forces candidates who bring discipline, structure and resilience
Career returners who may have prior analytical or financial experience but need a bridge back into the workforce
Internal moves from adjacent areas (claims analytics, portfolio management, risk)
The key is not just opening the door, but being explicit about what potential looks like: numerical reasoning, learning agility, communication, and values that fit the team.
2. Treating training as a product, not an afterthought
In many organisations, training is a collection of slides, a shared drive and some kind mentors giving up time to share their knowledge.
A capability-led approach treats training more like a product:
Clear learning outcomes (e.g. “can build and explain a GLM”, “can make changes in Radar safely under supervision”)
Structured pathways from beginner to intermediate to advanced
Blended delivery: self-study, live sessions, case studies and on-the-job projects
And most importantly, ownership – someone whose job is to maintain and evolve the curriculum
This doesn’t have to be a massive academy; even modest structure can significantly reduce the time it takes for new joiners to become genuinely useful.
3. Planning cohorts, not just backfilling
Backfilling is reactive: someone leaves, a project appears and a requisition is raised. Cohort planning is more proactive:
Looking 12–24 months ahead at expected demand, change projects and attrition
Identifying how many people you’ll likely need at different levels
Bringing people in batches, so they can learn together and the team can plan around them
That might mean a small intake of junior analysts every year, or a periodic cross-functional cohort that includes pricing, underwriting and data.
The benefit is both cultural and practical: people don’t feel like the only new face in the room, and your seniors can plan their mentoring time.
4. Building “stay factors” into the day job
Retention is often discussed in terms of pay and title. Those matter, but in many pricing teams the “stay factors” are more granular:
Do analysts get to see the impact of their work or does it vanish into a black box?
Are they exposed to different products, channels and projects or stuck doing the same thing?
Is there a visible path from analyst to senior, to manager, to head of function?
Is there a culture of feedback and coaching, or only point-in-time appraisal?
Designing for these factors requires cross-functional support – from HR to line management – but it’s often cheaper and more effective than trying to “fix” retention with counter-offers alone.
Where FlarePeople fits into this conversation
At FlarePeople, we spend a lot of our time listening to pricing leaders, early-career talent and people considering a move into insurance pricing.
As a result of the conversations we’ve had, we’ve built the UK’s only recruit-train-deploy model designed exclusively for insurance pricing – the Pathfinders™ Academy. It’s our response to the challenges described above, but the bigger story is this:
“The organisations that will be strongest in pricing over the next decade are the ones that take talent as seriously as they take models, tools and data.”
Whether you intend to build everything in-house, work with partners or blend the two, the key is to move from ad-hoc hiring to deliberate capability building.
That means:
Broadening who can become a pricing professional
Being intentional about how they learn
Planning ahead for the capacity you’ll need
Creating environments where people want to stay and grow
It’s slower and less dramatic than a big technology or product launch. But over time, it’s the difference between a pricing function that is constantly firefighting to one that quietly, consistently delivers.
If you’d like to pressure-test your own pricing talent strategy, a useful starting point is simply to ask:
What are we assuming the market will give us and how realistic is that?
What parts of our talent pipeline are fragile or single-threaded?
What would we design differently if we assumed the external market will stay tight for the next 5–10 years?
Those questions don’t have easy answers. But they’re the right ones for the moment we’re in.
Who is FlarePeople’s Pathfinders™ Academy for?
For insurers, MGAs and insurtechs
If you’re struggling to hire pricing analysts with the right blend of modelling, tools and commercial awareness or you want a repeatable way to grow talent rather than fighting the same market battle every quarter, the FlarePeople Recruit–Train–Deploy is built for you.
Pathfinders™ helps pricing teams build a steadier pipeline, reduce delivery risk, and take pressure off senior people who are stretched too thin.
If you’re planning 2026 hiring, let’s sense-check your pricing talent plan and show you where Recruit–Train–Deploy can make the biggest difference.
For future pricing talent
If you’re strong numerically, interested in data and commercial decision-making, and want a structured route into pricing (instead of being told you need experience to get experience), Pathfinders™ creates that bridge.
It’s a practical path into insurance pricing: learn the fundamentals, build real capability, then join a pricing team and grow through real work.
Interested in joining a future cohort? Register your interest and we’ll share details on the next Pathfinders™ intake.
Now is the time to build insurance pricing capability
If your pricing team is under pressure; open roles sitting too long, senior people stretched, delivery risk rising; it’s time to review your insurance pricing capability strategy. FlarePeople’s Pathfinders™ Recruit–Train–Deploy model was built to close the UK pricing skills gap by creating pricing-ready talent at pace, and with a repeatable pipeline.