Frankfurt, Munich The insurer Talanx has set itself ambitious goals for the next few years. CEO Torsten Leue wants to significantly increase profits and dividends by 2025. This also increases the demands on the workforce. “It is one of the greatest challenges to further develop the employees for the upcoming tasks,” said Talanx Board Member Caroline Schlienkamp in an interview with the Handelsblatt.
The 48-year-old has been the only woman on the Talanx Board of Management since May 2022 and is responsible for compliance, law, data protection, purchasing and internal services. As Labor Director, she has also been responsible for Human Resources since July.
The current environment of inflation, rising interest rates, natural catastrophes and cyber threats is anything but easy for the insurance industry. In addition, the corporations must drive the digital transformation towards more automation and standardization. Setting higher goals in this difficult overall situation seems ambitious.
At the Capital Markets Day, CEO Leue announced that the dividend should increase to EUR 2.50 per share in the years up to 2025. For the 2022 financial year, the dividend is expected to be two euros. In addition, the consolidated result should increase to 1.6 billion euros. According to estimates, it will be at the upper end of the range of 1.05 to 1.15 billion euros in the past year. That would be an increase of more than 50 percent at the top.
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More than 30 individual measures
Talanx also wants to achieve the three-year targets with the help of a new human resources strategy, which the Group will be presenting to employees at an event to kick off the year this Tuesday. The Talanx Group, which is listed in the MDax and which includes the primary insurer HDI and the reinsurer Hannover Re, employs around 24,000 people worldwide.
Specifically, like many other insurers, Talanx is faced with the challenge that the demands placed on employees are changing significantly as a result of digitization. If simple claims can be reported online by the insured and regulated by an algorithm, fewer clerks are needed. Instead, insurers are desperately looking for specialists.
New dual courses
“We will need more data analysts in the future. In addition, it is already more difficult to get lawyers, IT specialists or underwriters,” explains Schlienkamp. Insurers are also in competition with other sectors here. Schlienkamp therefore describes it as very challenging to continue “to get well-trained employees in a market that is becoming ever tighter”.
With the three new dual courses in business informatics with a focus on data science, IT security, business mathematics and actuarial science, Talanx intends to train more of its own staff in the future, who are hard to come by on the market.
Offering young people study opportunities is one thing. However, as is often the case with insurers, many employees have been with Talanx for a very long time, according to Schlienkamp some even for more than 40 years.
The average length of service in Germany – excluding Hannover Re – is currently 15 years. The average age is 45.8 years, which is higher than the national average. According to the Federal Statistical Office, employees in Germany were 42.6 years old on average in 2021.
The competition for personnel is intensifying in the insurance industry. Data analysts, for example, are in high demand.
(Photo: dpa)
Schlienkamp is apparently not afraid that some long-term employees could slow down change processes: “Many of our specialists have already experienced several transformations and can use all their knowledge to get involved in changes.” Nevertheless, it is important that a fresh breeze blows in every now and then – too because some long-serving Talanx employees are about to retire: “In view of the demographic change, filling the position will not be easy,” says Schlienkamp.
The proportion of women in management positions is slowly increasing
Even if Talanx will be dependent on new staff from outside over the next few years and will actively approach candidates and increase its presence on social media, Schlienkamp wants to offer prospects to existing employees in particular.
She promises to fill many management positions internally. Talanx has not yet quite achieved its goal of promoting a woman to every second vacant management position, admits Schlienkamp: “But we are constantly working on increasing the proportion of women in management.”
At Talanx in Germany, between the end of 2020 and the end of 2022, this rose from 21.3 percent to 24.3 percent at the first to third management levels. What is important to Schlienkamp, however, is that the Group not only wants to promote women as part of the diversity strategy, but also people with a wide variety of backgrounds: “We are convinced that the work results will be better if the people in the company do not have to give parts of their personality to the gate .”
Schlienkamp is positive about the trend towards working from home: “Mobile working and performance are not mutually exclusive.” So far, it has not been determined that there has been a drop in performance in the home office. Nevertheless, she firmly believes that “we are more creative and innovative when we meet in the office in a targeted manner”. The group has reached an agreement with the works council that employees can work from zero to 60 percent mobile – spread over a quarter.
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