Insurers are competing with one another to recruit qualified local staff after the Kingdom’s regulator directed that their administrative and customer care jobs be filled by Saudis.
Insurers are required to employ only Saudis in these departments, according to a directive issued by Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) that came into effect on 2 July.
Mr Adel Abdulaziz Al-Essa, a spokesman for the insurance industry in the Kingdom, told The Saudi Gazette that some insurers had achieved 80% Saudisation of jobs. A number of insurers have asked for more time.
SAMA said it will not extend the grace period for localising administrative and customer service jobs at insurance companies and that defaulters will be punished.
This first phase covers jobs relating to the vehicle claims department, claims reception centres, vehicle inspection centres, debris management and recovery functions, customer care department and complaints-handling department, the spokesman said.
This phase will be followed by another stage aiming to localise senior and technical positions in insurers.
SAMA Governor Ahmed Abdulkarim Alkholify has advised insurers to tap existing courses offered by Saudi universities to train required staff members and emphasised the need to achieve 100% Saudisation of jobs in administrative and customer service functions.
Mr Al-Essa said that the number of jobs in the insurance sector was less than 10,000 in 2016, adding that the 33 insurers in the sector had made commendable efforts to Saudise jobs in the sector.
“The main challenge is to Saudise technical jobs in the insurance sector,” he said. “Insurance is comparatively a novel sector for Saudis, and they are not interested in working for insurance firms. They have to learn skills to get employed in the sector. We have only a few Saudi employees in the technical field.”
However, he expects that the number of Saudi technical staff to increase when they have received the necessary training. M