By Herminia S. Jacinto
In my column on June 17, titled "Attracting talents to the insurance industry," I mentioned the SUITS program of the Insurance Institute for Asia and the Pacific, or the IIAP as it is more popularly known. SUITS stands for Select Universities Insurance Training Scholarship. The program consists of comprehensive training in life and non-life insurance, hands-on learning and practical sessions. It aims to provide comprehensive insights, networking opportunities and a chance to jump-start a career in the insurance industry.
Who is eligible to join the program? Graduating students from any CHEd-recognized college or university who are interested in exploring and pursuing a career in the life or non-life insurance industry. IIAP conducts an active search by inviting graduating students and entertaining referrals from these universities. It is a 10-week scholarship program designed to provide a strong foundation in the insurance business through core courses in insurance, basic management, values integration and presentation skills. No tuition is charged to the participants. Meals and daily allowances are provided for during the training period.
The program hopes to develop a strong knowledge of general insurance and life insurance concepts and principles. In addition, participants will learn strong interpersonal and communication skills and acquire confidence in dealing with colleagues and clients.
Soft skills like improving grammar in business writing, leadership, personality development and values integration are included in the program. When the training program is done, the scholars will be presented to the insurance companies who may want to hire them. Hiring companies will reimburse IIAP for the training costs.
IIAP can manage a group of around 20 scholars during one training period but is not getting that number every year. The program started in 2015, and the average number of enrollees is 9. All of the scholars are hired within the first two months after the end of the training period. That shows the acute need of the insurance industry for talents to fill the vacant or available positions in their respective companies.
It has been noted that insurance companies are not the priority or top-of-mind companies that new graduates want to join! Even during job fairs, people like to go to the booths of banks, marketing, technology and companies other than insurance. They prefer foreign companies or those with foreign affiliations, which they believe will give them opportunities to travel. The insurance industry continues to experience these challenges in enticing or attracting new graduates to join their companies.
Since there are very few subjects about insurance in most courses in the universities, the students have very little appreciation of the business of insurance. A negative image has hounded the industry as well when clients are not happy about claim settlements or when there are insurance companies that are remiss in their obligations to clients. It's just unfortunate that these are the ones highlighted or recalled, which contributes to the unpopularity of the industry. The SUITS program is a step towards providing the insurance industry with top-notch and well-trained employees who will eventually spread the good word about insurance. There is available training in the insurance industry so the new graduate need not feel insecure about his lack of knowledge of insurance. The IIAP provides all the training needs of the industry, ranging from the technical or pure insurance courses like life, fire, marine, motor, surety, aviation, and a lot more. The institute has collaboration arrangements with other institutes in the region and Europe to facilitate training of the local talents abroad. The institute turns 50 years old in August this year. It takes pride in being the pioneer insurance institute in the Asean/Asian regions. Students from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka have taken up courses in IIAP before they were able to put up their own insurance institutes.
We hope that more graduates will consider joining our SUITS program which starts in August this year. As they say, join the insurance industry and see the world!
Source: manilatimes.net
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