Middle East: Insurance becoming more popular career choice among business students - Deloitte
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Jan 2016
The insurance industry is growing in popularity among business students in the Middle East as an employment sector but its popularity rating remains low, according to the Deloitte Talent in Insurance Survey 2015.
The percentage of students in the region considering insurance as one of their top three career goals jumped from 9% in 2013 to 24% last year. This tangible growth of interest can be seen as a logical extension of the very high proportion (around 40%) of students who are keen in general on being “managers of people”, said Deloitte.
The 2015 survey finds that insurance-inclined students show greater-than-average ambition to be entrepreneurial and innovation (35% in the Middle East compared to the global average of 23%).
The report added: “Analysis of data over the past three years suggests that this is the right time for students to move into insurance and establish themselves as ‘technical’ or ‘functional’ experts.”
While “a competitive base salary” does not rank among the top 10 aspirations of insurance-inclined students in the Middle East, “high future earnings” ranks second, suggesting that students see insurance as a way to improve their remuneration in the long run. The students’ foremost aspiration in picking insurance as a career choice is “financial strength”.
The Deloitte report, which is based on the Universum Talent Survey 2015 of 1.2 million students in 55 countries, examined results from 211,000 business students in 30 markets across the world. The Middle East, in the survey, covers Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.