This year will be another banner year for hiring in insurance, according to the 2017 Insurance Industry Employment and Hiring Outlook Survey released today by GreatInsuranceJobs.com. However, a technological revolution is starting to already change career paths.

Almost all areas the insurance industry increased in size last year. Combined, the survey found 10,874 jobs currently open in the 72 surveyed companies. Additionally, more than 11,500 additional jobs are forecasted to come open in the last three quarters of this year.

“While outstanding news for job seekers and the industry as a whole, record employment and a ticking time bomb of mass retirements will certainly add to the HR challenges of finding and retaining qualified hires,” said Roger Lear, co-founder of GreatInsuranceJobs.com. “There is no disputing that there may be a crisis brewing to replace an aging population with a more diverse, technology-driven workforce.”

Other key findings from the survey include:

• 37% of surveyed companies are forecasting better hiring in 2017 than in 2016, which was already a banner year.
• 93% of companies currently have open jobs.
• 35.5% of companies are planning on hiring 51 or more employees in 2017, up from 31.5% in 2016.
• The top five top positions insurance companies are looking to fill are sales (all), customer service, claims, underwriting and technology.
• The top hiring challenges include lack of skilled talent, uncompetitive salaries and flexible work time.
• Insurance companies are not yet using artificial intelligence to find and recruit candidates.
• Insurance companies need to solve the predicted 25% of workforce retirement in the next 4 years.
• Insurance companies are becoming technology companies.

This year’s survey noted technological innovation with numerous new products and services. Instead of competing for talent from fellow insurance companies, many of the new types of insurance jobs will require recruiting future workers from companies like Google and Facebook. Employers surveyed in this report talked about how the insurance talent base is changing and the challenges that this presents, especially in an industry facing mass retirement along with a long-standing perception that insurance jobs are laggard.

“For an industry that was considered behind the times when it came to technology (think manual rating of policies and AS400 networks), it has made up for lost time very quickly over the last five years,” said Scott Kotroba, president and co-founder of GreatInsuranceJobs.com. “Insurance is truly evolving, and companies are in the middle of a huge change in the way they are doing their core business.”

The report is based on phone interviews with 72 insurance entities employing a total of 360,328 employees which represents 13% of the total insurance industry workforce. Interviews were conducted between Feb. 13 and March 7, 2017.