Pricing analysts leave because the market has far fewer of them than it needs, so every experienced analyst is in demand somewhere else. Counter-offers and retention bonuses delay the next move without removing the reason for it. The analysts who stay are the ones nobody else is chasing yet: people whose pricing careers started in your team.
Every pricing analyst you hire is a pricing analyst someone else wants. They wanted them before you did, and they'll still want them after you've signed the offer letter. The day your new hire starts is the day they go back on someone's target list.
If that sounds familiar, the root cause is usually supply, and supply shows up as a retention problem. The two need different fixes.
Why is there never enough pricing talent to go round?
Almost everyone recruiting for pricing draws from the same small group of experienced analysts, and nobody has been growing that group. A fixed pool gets passed between insurers at ever-higher salaries, and everyone involved calls it a talent strategy. We've covered why you can't recruit your way out of the pricing talent gap separately, so this piece looks at what the game does to the people in it.
It's musical chairs with a counter-offer. Recruitment can find you the next person, but it can't make the pool bigger. Until the pool grows, keeping people will feel like trying to hold water.
Why do pricing analysts keep leaving?
They're always in demand somewhere else, and the gap between what they earn with you and what someone else will pay rarely stays closed for long. Your last analyst walked out of a market that never had enough of them in the first place.
The usual responses buy time rather than loyalty. A counter-offer might buy a quarter. A retention bonus might buy a year. Neither changes the maths, because the people chasing your analyst haven't gone anywhere. They've moved on to the next name on the list, and they'll be back.
There's a cost beyond the salary line. Every counter-offer resets the pay expectations of everyone sitting near that person. Every departure takes a model's history out of the building. And every replacement search puts you back at the start of a process that took months last time.
There is one type of analyst who doesn't behave like this: the one whose pricing career started with you. They aren't on a recruiter's list, because until recently they weren't pricing analysts at all. They aren't comparing you with a previous employer, because there wasn't one. They stay because nobody is pulling at them yet.
Can a graduate scheme grow pricing analysts who stay?
It can, but slowly, and mostly for the graduates who choose pricing at the end of a typical two-year graduate rotation. By then many of the intake have moved into underwriting or claims, and the ones who pick pricing arrive as beginners. Your senior team then has to train them on the job.
A graduate scheme is a fine way to build a general insurance career and a slow way to build a pricing team. If you want analysts who start in pricing and stay in pricing, the training has to come first. We look at what helps early-career analysts settle in Beyond graduate hiring: building pricing capability.
How do you get pricing analysts nobody else is chasing?
You build them before the market knows they exist. Our recruit-train-deploy model starts by finding people with the aptitude for pricing but no pricing CV. We recruit STEM graduates, ex-armed forces veterans, and career returners and changers, selected for aptitude and attitude.
The Pathfinders™ Academy runs for 10 weeks, mostly online, through modules you work through at your own pace, live training and webinars with the pricing team, with some in-person days. The syllabus covers SQL, Python, MI, GLMs, segmentation, monitoring, GBMs, Radar, deployment and testing, governance and Consumer Duty, communication and power skills, and insurance sector knowledge and business acumen.
Pathfinders are employed by FlarePeople and contracted to your team for an initial contract period, typically 24 months, with the option for you to take them on permanently.
Your team is the first pricing team they work in. You fill the analyst layer with people who've trained specifically for pricing, without joining the bidding war for experienced analysts.
What does an analyst who stays look like?
Pathfinders make an impact from day one. On their first day they can open the tools, understand the model in front of them and ask a sensible question about it. That's the difference the ten weeks make. Every Pathfinder we've trained is now working as a pricing analyst with a UK insurer.
It changes what your existing team does, too. They oversee rather than teach from scratch, which matters when your senior analysts are the scarcest people you have. Every hour spent on the basics is an hour not spent on the models. Pathfinders have also chosen pricing deliberately, through ten weeks of it, rather than drifting into it at the end of a rotation.
Who is this for?
Pricing leaders who are tired of the game. If your last three pricing hires came from the same two competitors, if you've counter-offered the same person twice, or if your analyst layer turns over faster than you can train it, this is for you.
It isn't a replacement for hiring experienced people. You still need a Head of Pricing and senior analysts who've seen a few cycles, and recruitment is the right tool for that. Recruit-train-deploy fills the analyst layer underneath them without joining the bidding war. If too much rests on one or two people, our piece on the hero analyst problem covers that risk. Our talent challenges page sets out the wider picture.
Fix the shortage, don't just describe it
If you'd rather fix the shortage than keep describing it, book a call with Anthony. You can talk through what our next Academy covers, when Pathfinders could be available and how the contract works in practice.
Frequently asked questions
Do counter-offers work for pricing analysts?
Sometimes, and briefly. A counter-offer can keep someone who was already halfway out of the door, but the reason they started looking hasn't gone away. In a market where every experienced analyst is in demand, it tends to delay a departure rather than prevent one, and it resets pay expectations for the people around them.
Does a Pathfinder stay after the contract ends?
That's your choice. The initial contract is typically 24 months, with the option to take the Pathfinder on permanently at the end of it.
Does a Pathfinder need an insurance background?
No. Pathfinders are selected for aptitude and attitude, and insurance sector knowledge is part of the Pathfinders™ Academy syllabus.