eFinancialCareers

With investment banks still in the doldrums, people in search of new job opportunities may be forgiven for looking elsewhere.

Insurance is one such possibility. Insurance companies' appetite for staff with banking experience has proved resilient despite the downturn.

Simon Hearn, of the search firm Russell Reynolds, said insurers are looking for people with an investment banking background to help manage their alternative risk transfer (ART) products.

"Clients are telling us that there is not enough of this sort of talent in the insurance industry," he said. "They therefore need to look outside. People with capital markets and fixed income derivatives experience and with a strong network of corporate contacts are in demand."

Tony Tucker of search firm Executive Resourcing Group said individuals with capital markets experience were able to go into insurance underwriting, broking and relationship management, and political risk roles.

Tim Dickinson of Swiss Re, the reinsurer, said "Swiss Re has certainly experienced some migration from the investment banking community. Indeed a significant part of our business operation depends on our being able to attract people with strong capital market skills." Insurers' interest in capital markets bankers is not new. But it is growing. ART, which includes the use of non-traditional approaches such as derivatives for financing insurance risks, has accounted for much of the recent growth in the insurance industry.

Correspondingly, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Lehman and the Royal Bank of Scotland are among banks that now offer ART products.

Insurers are keen to develop their own understanding of what can be a complex area. "Insurance companies are increasingly taking packaged credit derivatives products from banks. They've realised that it makes sense to have in-house experts to help them understand how these things work," said a senior banker now working at one of the major reinsurers.

The more banking hires they make, the more that insurers are prepared to pay. Despite initially balking at banking packages, insurers are now said to be offering between £200,000 and £350,000 (plus equity) for a director of ART, and between £200,000 and £300,000 for high level brokers in the ART sector.

Hearn said that the downturn in banking means that more people are willing to contemplate a move to the insurance sector. Many of those moving are in their forties and fifties, he says.

However, insurers are unlikely to accommodate a flood of banking applications: Hearn said there were probably no more than 50 vacancies currently in London.