Every few years, the industry turns its attention to the codes of practice. We dissect updates to the General Insurance Code, anticipate changes to the Brokers and Life Code and prepare for whatever new expectations our regulators and consumers place upon us. And rightly so. These all make up the components of our professional behaviour. They are our benchmark for fairness, transparency, and customer outcomes, living expressions of our industry’s values and hard-won agreements about what good looks like when commercial pressure, complexity, and customer vulnerability collide.
But while we pore over clauses, guidance notes and timelines, a bigger question sits quietly beneath it all: Do we actually have the skills to deliver on the standards that are expected of us?
Because if people don’t have the right skills for their role, for the future of their role and for the transfer of knowledge about tomorrow’s risk, then our compliance frameworks struggle for relevancy. The legislation, regulations and codes tell us what we should do. Skills determine what we actually can do.
Risk is changing faster than the legislation, regulations and codes that govern it. Climate-exposed assets, escalating cyber threats, AI-driven fraud, social inflation, systemic pressures; these forces are here.
At the same time, the talent and skills ecosystem is fragile. With up to 30% of the workforce expected to retire by 2030, insurance employers are already reporting shortages of skilled staff. We are about to lose experienced people faster than we can replace them just as the risk environment demands deeper expertise, sharper judgement and stronger human capability than ever before.
What’s more, an estimated 39% of the skills we rely on today will be outdated by 2030. That statistic should give us pause. It suggests that many of the technical, analytical and human capabilities we currently take for granted will not automatically carry forward into a more complex risk environment.
Skills erosion happens slowly, often unnoticed, until expectations outpace capability. And when that gap opens, it’ll surface not as a training issue, but as a compliance failure, poor customer outcomes, or a systemic weakness the compliance frameworks were never meant to absorb on their own.
Codes set minimum standards, signalling how the industry intends to behave. They create a shared language across insurers, brokers, regulators and consumers, anchoring trust and setting expectations that go beyond black‑letter law. Codes have demonstrably lifted standards over time, the scale of compliance activity in Australia makes that clear. In the most recent reporting year, insurers recorded 67,394 breaches of the General Insurance Code of Practice. These figures do not suggest the industry is falling short. On the contrary, they show an industry that is actively monitoring and reporting its behaviour.
But they also reveal something important: Compliance frameworks cannot deliver professionalism on their own. And the insurance professionals that are best suited to deliver best outcomes for their clients are those that are digitally fluent enough to work alongside intelligent systems without surrendering judgement. They are curious enough to keep learning as risk evolves. They are resilient enough to operate in permanent volatility, and creative enough to solve problems that don’t arrive neatly packaged within policy wording.
When customers are navigating a claim, seeking advice or trying to understand their cover, the difference between compliance on paper and professionalism in practice comes down to the skill of the person in front of them. And if we are honest, skills should be the first investment on any compliance journey.
Insurance ultimately runs on trust. In a world of rising expectations and volatile risks, trust has become the industry’s real currency. Customers trust that their insurer will act fairly when something goes wrong. Businesses trust that the advice they receive is sound. Communities trust that the system will respond when disasters strike. Trust requires judgement, it requires expertise and it requires the skills to apply principles in moments where the rulebook alone cannot provide the answer.
If we want a resilient, future-ready industry we must invest in our people.
