U.S. life, health and annuity issuers are still interested in adding sales and marketing talent, but not that interested. Jacobson Group and Aon’s Ward performance benchmarking division asked insurers to rate how likely they are to expand staffing for 12 types of employees on a 7-point scale, with 7 reflecting the highest likelihood of increasing staffing.
Life, health and annuity issuers rated the odds that they will increase sales and marketing staffing this year at about a 4. The enthusiasm level for expanding life, health and annuity sales and marketing teams is similar to what it was about a year ago. Interest in expanding sales and marketing staff came in fourth after interest in expanding underwriting, technology, analytics and claims teams.
What it means: Jeff Rieder, a partner at Aon, suggested that the results may reflect successful efforts by insurers to focus on their most profitable products and customers. Hiring may be a little soft because insurers are getting more revenue per unit sold and don’t necessarily need to increase staffing as much to support revenue growth, Rieder said.
The survey: Jacobson and Ward base their insurance labor market reports on results from a quarterly insurer survey. The survey team does not say how many insurers participate. Only 16% of the companies that participate focus on writing life insurance, annuities or health insurance.
General expectations: Life, health and annuity issuers that participate in the survey seem to be more optimistic about revenue: About 73% told the survey team their revenue is likely to increase this year. That’s up from 71% in 2024.
But the insurers projected growth in total staffing levels has fallen to 0.42% for 2025. A year ago, the insurers were projecting 0.92% growth for 2024. The insurers’ hiring turned out to be much weaker than the insurers had hoped.
About 88% started the year expecting to maintain or increase staffing levels, and only 12% expected to shrink. Instead, only 60% maintained or increased staff levels, and 40% saw staffing levels fall. This year, 80% of the life, health and annuity issuers say they expect to maintain or increase staffing levels.
Sales and marketing expectations: Jacobson and Ward combine most of the public survey data about sales and marketing staffing, rather than breaking out separate results for insurers in the life, health and annuity market and the property and casualty market.
Insurers of all kinds said that recruiting sales and marketing staffers is relatively easy when compared with recruiting most other types of employees. They might be offering new sales and marketing hires somewhat better jobs: They expect that 5% of the staff they add in that area this year will have executive or managerial jobs, up from 3% in 2024.
Pay: Jacobson and Ward publish separate compensation studies. They did find that merit pay raises for all kinds of insurers in all roles are likely to average only about 3.2% this year, down from 4.2% last year.