We are lucky enough to have a good relationship with the Insurance Institute of Liverpool and we have recently been discussing how COVID-19 has affected businesses within the sector. They have kindly shared information from their Impact Report survey to enable us to publish this data for our clients and candidates within the Insurance and Financial Services sector. We feel this data provides some insight into the sector at the moment and hope it will be a useful tool for you to utilise should you need it.
We would like to thank Phil Beattie and James Almond for all their hard work in getting this information together for us. They have been a great help and source of information to understand what is happening within the Insurance and Financial Services sector.
Before we delve into the survey let's get some quotes from Phil and James themselves:
Phil Beattie – CII President / Home & Commercial Property Consultant – Direct Line Group
“The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone far and wide. Many of us have had to change our way of working and for some the pandemic has been a worrying time in terms of job security.”
“When the Insurance Institute of Liverpool council met for the first time virtually, a lot of the discussion was on how us as council members have been impacted and how we have adapted to a different way of working. James Almond came up with the idea of engaging with our members to understand what the impact has been at a local level. This resulted in a survey being issued out to local members with a series of questions that looks at the impact to individuals and how the organisations they work in have responded. A big thank you to everyone who responded to the survey and to James for organising it”.
James Almond – Business Change Manager – Direct Line Group
“one of our main areas of focus in our work as active council members is to study and observe the financial services market and how the sector reacts to trends and behaviours. We knew from numerous media sources that the pandemic had impacted the UK in a variety of ways, we were keen to understand what this meant for our local members and how well we had seen business critical change delivered, which potentially could give an aggravated view of how this has been received by members and prospects of the local market for the short and medium term “
Introduction
In October 2020, the Insurance Institute of Liverpool sent a survey to their local members to understand the impact of COVID-19. The aim of the survey was to get an understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their members and the organisations they work for, including how they responded during the first national lockdown. The survey contained 16 questions in total, sent to their members who were happy to receive email communication. In total 55 responses were received and the survey was on a strictly “anonymous” basis.
The results give a useful insight into how COVID-19 impacted employees and organisations in the insurance and financial planning sectors within the Merseyside region. They do however recognise the survey’s limitations as the Insurance Institute of Liverpool (at the time of writing) has just over 1700 members. The response rate of 55 will only represent a small portion of their members’ views and experiences of COVID. They also recognised that individuals who work (currently and unemployed), within insurance and financial planning in the local region will not be CII members.
The Insurance Institute of Liverpool COVID-19 Impact Survey October 2020
Executive Summary
One of the headline results is almost 90 % of respondents worked throughout the first lockdown. This reinforces the strength of the local industry and ability to adapt to Government required and customer demand. This has given security and comfort to a range of employees, and seeing their employee’s response to COVID 19 gives them confidence of their current job security.
Another headline is that 95 % of responses confirmed that the nature of change delivered to them to enable working practices to continue ranged between good and excellent. Change delivery on a whole has improved since the COVID 19 pandemic, citing support and learning frameworks had been put in place to help with virtual communication and learning and embedding of change.
A clear shift to online collaboration tools (Microsoft teams and Zoom) has reinforced the digital shift across the workplace.
Some emerging observations about increased productivity seem to have been validated by the survey, with 43% saying it has increased, 30% stayed the same and 25% responding that it had decreased.
When asked about the impact on mental health, there was mixed results with nearly half of respondents (49%) stated it had stayed the same and 40% that it had decreased (including three out of six of those who were not working continuously), with 7% indicating that their mental health had improved during the pandemic.
Conclusion
The Liverpool insurance and financial planning industry has shown a robust and promising response to the COVID 19 pandemic. It is clear that the models in place and technology considerations have allowed work to transition from the work place to the “ Home office “ fairly seamlessly, whilst not impacting productivity.
The Survey results in detail
The focus of this survey was on the impact of COVID-19 on the working lives of individual members and the changes within their workplace.
Individuals
There was an even spread of brokers and financial planning respondents (35% and 36% respectively), with insurers (16%) and those in ‘other’ professions (13%) accounting for the remainder (Fig.1). Fheaorty-nine of respondents (89%) continued to work throughout the initial COVID-19 lockdown, two were partially furloughed and the remaining four respondents were in turn furloughed throughout, unemployed, made part-time or were self-employed (Fig.2).
Professional productivity during lockdown appears to have increased or stayed the same for the majority of respondents (Fig.3), though 25% (fourteen) stated that it had decreased; four of these being those who had been furloughed or had hours and pay reduced.
More than half indicated that their workload had increased (Fig. 4), and over a quarter that it had remained the same; almost a fifth thought their workload had decreased, four of these being individuals who had not worked continuously throughout the lockdown. 71% of respondents told us they were not worried about their future employment prospects due to the impact of the pandemic, including three out of six respondents who had not worked continuously.
When asked about their mental health since the start of the pandemic, nearly half of respondents (49%) stated it had stayed the same and 40% that it had decreased (including three out of six of those who were not working continuously), with only 7% indicating that their mental health had improved during the pandemic.
51% thought that the pandemic had made their work / life balance easier to maintain (Fig. 5) and of these most indicated that their mental health had stayed the same, though interestingly six of those indicated that though the balance was easier, their own mental health had still declined. 33% felt it was harder to maintain a good work / life balance during the pandemic, and the majority of these acknowledged that their mental health had also decreased. 16% stated that their work / life balance had remained the same.
Fig.5 – Impact of COVID on work / life balance by % and number of respondents
Organisation
The survey asked about the level of change occurring within the respondents’ organisations during the first lockdown: the majority (85%) indicated there had been more change compared to previous years, and the remainder thought a similar level of change had taken place; no-one thought less change had taken place. Of the change that occurred almost half (47%) thought it was business critical, 40% considered the change a mixture of business critical and ‘nice to have’, with only 4% stating it was only ‘nice to have’; 9% were unsure of the change categorisation.
The way these changes were communicated varied; most were via Zoom or Microsoft Teams (51% combined), the next most popular communication method being email (22%), then telephone calls (13%). Other methods were used less frequently, and 8 respondents indicated that a combination of these methods (plus standalone channels such as GoToMeeting) was used to inform them of changes.
Of the changes deployed, half thought the success rate was good (51%), over a third thought it was excellent (35%) and the rest thought it was fair (15%) – none thought the success rate was poor. When asked about the implementation of changes, 15% stated they were implemented extremely well, 40% thought very well, another 40% considered there was room for improvement in the implementation process and 5% thought it was done poorly; of the 40% who thought there was room for improvement in the implementation process, sixteen out of twenty-two still considered the deployment success rate of change as either excellent or good.
50% of respondents thought that their experience of receiving change within their organisation had improved post-COVID; 43% considered it had remained the same and 7% thought it was below the expected level compared to pre-COVID. Of the changes implemented, 48% were supported with a framework and network in place, 41% received ad hoc support, and 11% had no support; of the six respondents who received no support, five answered that there was room for improvement in the implementation process.
Overall, 40% of respondents felt the experience of how change had been deployed and executed within their organisation was excellent; 25% though it was very good; 31% felt it had been good, and only 4% (two people) thought it was poor – none considered it very poor.
When asked if they were worried about the future of their organisation due to the impact of COVID, a large majority of forty-three people (78%) answered ‘no’, but of this group six were worried about their own employment.
Finishing Notes
Well, I think this survey really does give us an insight into what has been happening, again I'd like to thank Phil Beattie and James Almond for producing this information and allowing us to forward this on to our clients and candidates. All the survey text and images within this document are copyright of the Insurance Institute of Liverpool. Insurance Institute of Liverpool have a comprehensive members package, if you would like to look at a membership please follow this link: Insurance Institute of Liverpool Membership