RODRIGUEZ
By TED CARTER
The prospect of calamities has kept insurance executives from sleeping easy since way back in the 1300s when enterprising Genoans began insuring ships and cargo.
Nowadays, insurance execs are trying to head off a modern-day calamity of not having new blood to carry the industry forward as baby boomers retire from the field in droves.
Their efforts are getting much-needed help from several universities around the country that have become critical supply lines for moving millennials into the industry. In the Southeast, the University of Mississippi is a prominent contributor, as are the University of Georgia and Florida State University.
Ole Miss didn’t get its lofty insurance industry reputation overnight. It opened the program in 1948, making it one of the oldest in the nation.
LIEBENBERG
The University of Mississippi’s Dr. Andre Liebenberg says the industry calls the personnel shortage a “talent gap,” but the finance professor and Gwenett & Jack W. Robertson chair of insurance concedes the flat truth is “there are not that many students who enter the universities that say, ‘I want to be an insurance major.’”
On…
