LONDON – The insurance sector faces an “invisible problem” of people retiring from the industry and taking their years of experience and knowledge with them, experts say.

To address the issue, organizations should formalize training and knowledge sharing at all levels and ensure that senior staff can continue to offer advice after they leave full-time work, they said.

Companies should also build corporate cultures that are attractive to a diverse range of employees across generations, they said during sessions at the Business Insurance Women to Watch EMEA 2025 Awards & Leadership Conference last week.

“Today, organizations have an invisible problem that is quietly eroding beneath the surface,” said Julia Graham, CEO of Airmic, the London-based professional association for risk managers. “When experienced people retire and move on, they take invaluable expertise with them and their knowledge can then be gone forever.”

The knowledge is seldom documented and is tacit, based on intuitive decisions, she said.

Ten years ago, of the 60,000 people working in the London market, 17% were over 50; today it’s 25% and in 2035, about 35% to 40% are expected to be over 50, said Sheila Cameron, chief executive of the Lloyd’s Market Association, the trade association for Lloyd’s of London insurers.

To preserve expertise, the LMA has an academy that offers training for newcomers to insurance through to non-executive directors, she said.

At the junior level, training focuses on technical skills, but training for more senior staff focuses on softer skills, Ms. Cameron said.

“At the senior level, it’s all about relationships, presence, all of those things that are critical to developing one’s executive career,” she said.

That type of training is most effectively conducted through sponsorship programs, Ms. Cameron said.

To effectively transmit knowledge across generations, companies need to instill a culture in which experienced staff are encouraged to keep learning and share their knowledge, said Alison Tamm, global risk director at Control Risks, a London-based security and strategic intelligence company.

“When you’ve got somebody that has got that experience but is also still actively interested in constantly learning, to me, that is a winning combination,” she said.

And when senior executives retire, they should be maintained through an “alumni network” for current management to bounce ideas off, Ms. Tamm said.

Organizational culture should also extend to behavior and diversity, said Ms. Cameron.

“The poorest behavior you’re prepared to walk past, or you’re prepared to accept, defines the culture of your organization,” she said.

Organizations should maintain behavior and inclusion standards that help them to attract a wide range of staff, Ms. Cameron said.

Advances in technology can help encourage gender diversity in organizations, by freeing women from mundane tasks, said Sophie Strangward, head of the international and global specialties sales desk at Guy Carpenter & Co. in London.

For example, administrative tasks are often assigned to women on a team, but artificial intelligence can now be used to perform tasks like taking meeting notes, she said.

“It’s very simple, but I think it’s quite an important development for women,” Ms. Strangward said.

Technology can also be used to create “portals of wisdom” that can be passed on to new employees, said Alisa Grafton, a London-based consultant, scrivener notary and speaker on intergenerational networking.

Younger generations of workers often change companies more frequently than previous generations and the investment in their training is lost to their employers, she said.

Companies should appoint “a learning director,” Ms. Grafton said. “The professional who is actually in charge of making sure that all that wisdom in an organization is not lost and is maintained somewhere.”