116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Iowa students find a not-so-risky business
“Insurance touches us everywhere. We’re all living under the umbrella.”
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Long a strong part of the state’s economy, Iowa’s insurance industry is working with higher education to attract new hires close to home.
“It can be challenging to recruit next-generation talent from outside the state,” said Jason Smith, CEO of Cedar Rapids-based TrueNorth. “A lot of young people on the coasts want to stay on the coasts, while a lot of people in the Midwest want to move to the larger cities.”
In just its third year the University of Iowa’s risk management and insurance program is already the nation’s fifth-largest. This fall, Coe College in Cedar Rapids is launching a risk-management concentration for its Business Administration major, and Iowa State University is adding its own risk management certificate — essentially a minor in the field.
“Coe alums have reached out to the college saying ‘We need people who can do this, what can we do to help get people going down this path?’” said Josh Christensen, assistant professor of business administration and economics. “A quarter to a third of current industry professionals are reaching retirement age, so there’s going to be lots of opportunity.”
“We’re in anticipation of what could be a shortage as (college) enrollment is dropping nationwide and Iowa is experiencing what’s called the brain drain,” said Samantha Rogers, TrueNorth’s vice president of human resources. “We’re doing our part.”
The University of Iowa has offered insurance-related studies for decades, “but somehow in the ‘70s or ‘80s it fell out of favor,” said Martin Grace, a professor of finance and faculty director of the Vaughan Institute at the Tippie College of Business. “The timing became right and we turned the certificate four-class program into a major. There hadn’t been a big school like Iowa introducing an insurance major in many years.”
Iowa’s program has 302 enrolled undergraduates, with another 45 working toward a certificate. An additional 14 students are enrolled in the MBA program with a risk-management focus, and two are working toward PhDs in the field.
“It was an easy call to start a program,” said Grace. “Going to a major seemed like a big thing, but the infrastructure was already there.”
With fall registration still underway, student counts at Coe and ISU aren’t yet available.
“We just started it,” said Rahul Parsa, professor in finance at ISU’s Ivy College of Business. “It’s brand new.”
Parsa, who also directs school’s actuarial science program, said offering a risk-management certificate was a natural given ISU’s proximity to Des Moines’ finance and insurance industry.
“They all fit in together,” he said. “The mission of the land-grant (university) is to support the industry.”
“They’re in the right way saying ‘Hey, this is a big thing in Iowa and our students are being left out,” Grace said of the new programs. “I think that’s correct.”
Iowa’s industry grew out of immigrants’ experience with insurance and finance, according to Grace.
“Catholics and immigrants were often discriminated against in life insurance by the big Eastern companies,” he said. “The Knights of Columbus was started to have an insurance for members. In the property insurance area, they formed mutual companies. Iowa had very strict banking laws, and it made it difficult for banks to exist. With insurance companies, if you put money in you could borrow it.”
The larger public universities were able to add the new major without adding faculty. Coe, a smaller private college, will add some staff for its new program, Christensen said.
“The plan is to add some additional faculty, especially as it relates to insurance-specific courses,” he said. “The plan is to reach out to people in industry and people tangential to the industry.”
The schools have often worked with Iowa insurers looking to attract new hires. Three years ago, the Iowa Economic Development Authority launched an early-internship program, Insure Your Future, for freshmen and sophomores.
“They can experience the opportunities in insurance and risk management, so the youth that’s in school understand it’s a place to go,” said Rogers. “We are working with Coe College right now as they are launching their program.”
The need to assess risks and their costs extends beyond the insurance industry, with many midsize and larger companies maintaining in-house staff to guide decisions.
“More and more businesses are looking for a level of problem-solving, advocacy, and strategic thinking,” Smith said. “It’s becoming recognized as a core competency.”
“Risk management is the process of managing corporate risks, and insurance is just one of the pieces,” said Grace. “Both of those skills are in real high demand and short supply.”
That can be seen at TrueNorth. With offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Texas, the company doesn’t provide insurance itself but is an insurance broker, working with client businesses to identify and reduce risks and find the best coverage for them.
“You have your own set of risks and issues you’re trying to solve. It can be about wind and hail, it can be liability issues,” said Smith, who started at TrueNorth as a summer intern in 1995. “Thirty years ago, we weren’t talking about cyber liability, we weren’t talking about climate change and the property risks that we are today.”
“The more things that happen in the world, the more things there are to be concerned about, like data privacy,” Christensen said.
“Insurance touches us everywhere,” said Parsa. “We’re all living under the umbrella.”
Daily Newsletters