Megan Miller, recently appointed executive director of the Spencer Educational Foundation Inc., oversees the objectives of the organization charged with bringing young college recruits into the world of risk and insurance. She began her own trek as a risk engineer with FM Global 17 years ago and continued in various underwriting, client management and sales roles at XL Insurance America Inc., Swiss Re Ltd. and Beecher Carlson Holdings Inc. Based in Philadelphia, Ms. Miller recently spoke with Business Insurance Assistant Editor Louise Esola about her role with Spencer, industry recruiting and what she’s learned thus far. Edited excerpts follow.
Q: We often hear from industry executives that recruitment is difficult, and we often hear many say, “I never knew I’d be in the insurance or risk management industry, but I ended up here and I loved it.” What is your take on recruiting talent, candidates who might end up elsewhere in business?
A: We don’t want insurance and risk management professionals to be in the industry by accident. And up until several years ago, that’s really been the case. They either have an aunt or an uncle (in insurance) or they study business, and they kind of get this random job posting and they sort of fall into it. And so what Spencer is aiming to do is to make that decision more purposeful, and in doing that to really make the study more intentional; to produce candidates that are better prepared coming right out of the gate from college or from a master’s program to really jump into the industry with an excellent background with as much of a network as they can have at that age after only having studied a few years. Our stated mission is to fund the education of tomorrow’s risk management and insurance leaders. So the underlying idea is we must get intentional about these careers, and let’s boost our talent pipeline so that we don’t just have to rely on people falling into it by accident.
Q: Are there any issues that you’d like to draw attention to in the industry in your new role?
A: One of the frightening statistics that I keep hearing is that we’re about to encounter a dearth of some 400,000 people in terms of the talent pipeline — that the anticipated gap in candidates is going to be about 400,000, between all of the baby boomers continuing to retire and all of these new technologies opening up. I feel that over the years, the industry has continued to attract better and better talent, and that’s the goal at Spencer: to just keep filling that pipeline with really top-notch people who might have otherwise gone into finance or banking, and really attract them into our industry.
Q: Diversity and inclusion is continuing to catch on. How does Spencer plan to tackle that issue?
A: We review our applications with an eye toward diversity. We just signed an agreement with the New York City Association of Insurance Women. We’ll be receiving a four-year donation from them, and their scholarships will be awarded to two women candidates. We’re looking forward to partnering with more organizations like this that are encouraging diversity. I think that by partnering with these other organizations that are really making strides in terms of producing diverse candidates for the industry, Spencer can really take advantage of the good work that they’re doing.
Q: What are some of the Spencer programs you are excited about?
A: The scholarships are straightforward: If you’re a student studying in some kind of risk management program at a university, you can apply for our scholarship. We have pretty stringent criteria, which is nice because then we end up with a talent pool of Spencer scholars that we are happy to advertise to the industry as someone who has already been prescreened. So you know if you’re interviewing a Spencer scholar, they have a certain academic performance and they’ve already been vetted by a known organization. I think that’s helpful. And we produce a resume book every year. In 2019, we had 93 scholarships that we gave out for about $600,000 in total. And then the internship program is another piece. It’s particularly designed for risk management departments. What we find is that the insurance companies and the brokers tend to have internship programs, and they have funding for that. (Meanwhile) the risk managers — and they’re typically small risk management departments within a much bigger company — they usually don’t have a budget to have an intern. So the risk manager can apply for a grant from Spencer to hire an intern for the summer. We give out amounts of $7,500 to a company.
Q: Looking back to the time when you first started out, what surprised you about the industry?
A: I had no idea about the multitude of career paths that you could tackle. I studied engineering and have an engineering degree. I started out as an engineer. I moved into underwriting, which is something I didn’t even know existed, and then I was in sales and client management and broker relationships. And now I’m running a nonprofit in the industry. I don’t think there are many people who kind of run the gamut of all of the different possibilities within an insurance career. So that to me was pretty surprising in a very good way.
Q: We hear frequently that you’re always going to learn something new on this career path. What has been your experience?
A: There are just so many different, cool things that you get to see. When I was a risk engineer, I was everywhere from the inside of the Washington, D.C., sewer system to all the way at the top of the Houston Astrodome. I was at Yankee Stadium when it was being built. There’s just so many cool things to see and do, because insurance really touches everything. No business can operate without insurance. If you can find your niche, I really think the sky’s the limit.
