By Sharon Emek, founder and CEO of Work At Home Vintage Experts LLC (WAHVE)
It’s a demographic fact that the average age in the insurance industry is 58. Our industry is facing a huge baby-boomer retirement trend that could either be a staffing disaster or an unprecedented opportunity for insurance firms and their retiring staff.
Retirement today is not an end game. People retire from the office but not from work. They want to work differently as they phase out of the traditional workforce and create a better life-work balance. They also know that if they continue to work, they will stay healthier, live longer and have greater financial freedom.
Many in the industry today would love to “sort of retire” but are fearful of closing the door. They are afraid that after a few months they will be bored have the need to supplement their retirement income. They worry that no one will hire them ever again, or that they will end up as a greeter at Walmart or their CIC or CPCU designation will lose its value.
The solution to this conundrum can help your retiring employees create a new career after retirement: “Work At Home Vintage Experts” (WAHVE). WAHVE was created to solve two of the industry’s major imminent problems: the shortage of qualified talent, and the loss of the industry’s institutional knowledge as boomers retire.
When you encourage a retiring staffer to register with WAHVE, you are helping everyone because:
- You are keeping the institutional knowledge in the industry and making it available for others who need it.
- You are enabling a transition for your staff.
- You are providing the industry an alternative to outsourcing insurance jobs overseas.
According to the latest research, 50 percent of soon-to-retire baby boomers are prepared to work from home. They have high-speed Internet connections, up-to-date computers and smart phones; they surf the Internet and use computers to video chat. Now all they need is a job.
WAHVE is the perfect opportunity for you to help your employees who want to retire have a soft landing as they leave the regular workforce. For the past five years, WAHVE has been capturing the insurance industry’s retiring baby-boomer population (“vintage experts”) who want to continue to work and then outsourcing them back to insurance firms (agents/brokers, wholesalers, insurers, and vendors), on a full-time, part-time or project basis. We have many insurance firms’ approaching us with work assignments that can be a good fit for retiring insurance agency employees.
Invite your current and past retirees to visit the WAHVE website and apply to become a WAHVE.