Michelle Sartain is president of Marsh U.S. and Canada, overseeing brokerage and risk advisory services. She is also involved in Marsh’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and spoke at parent company Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc.’s recent Equity=Possibility event in Atlanta, which gathered Black executives, C-suite leaders and insurance market practitioners from inside and outside of the company. Ms. Sartain, who was one of the 2022 Business Insurance Women to Watch, recently spoke with Editor Gavin Souter about diversity efforts in the insurance sector and what companies need to do to develop and retain diverse talent. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: The insurance sector has been looking at ways to increase diversity for some time. Where do you think the industry stands in that process?

A: I don’t think we can claim success yet. When you look around at some of the senior positions within the industry, we’ve been more successful in seeing more diversity from a gender perspective, but when we think about our aspiration to bring in more diverse talent from other underrepresented communities, we still have a long way to go.

We’re making progress as an industry and Marsh is very intentional about trying to think about how we recruit on college campuses. But important as it is to bring in people from diverse backgrounds, it’s also vital that we then create a culture within the organization that makes it a company that they want to stay at and thrive and grow their careers. Some really good work has been done through our colleague resource groups. 

Q: What do you think is holding things up or do you think it’s just inevitable that it’s going to take time? 

A: When you look around, the people who would have exposure to this industry are people who have historically been in this industry, so they’re predominantly white and male. Although we do have many more women who work in the industry, the rates of them coming into executive leadership positions are improved but still not great. Some of that I think is awareness, so it really does come down to where are we recruiting and how are we getting out to different minority communities. 

Marsh has invested quite a bit of time and effort to try and recruit from historically black colleges and universities and we also sponsor a RISE program, which is an MBA fellowship program, which again is to try and increase the awareness of insurance in minority communities that might not otherwise look to insurance for their careers. 

It is really important that we try to emphasize just what a great career insurance can be, and one of the biggest challenges that we have is that sometimes people in the industry are very deprecating about what it is we do. When you think about the fact that it touches every other industry and the biggest problems that we face in the world, it should be something that we talk about with a lot more excitement and enthusiasm. And we need people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives if we’re going to continue to be able to innovate and solve the problems of the future.

Q: What other things can companies do?

A: We need to just be more intentional as a community. We need insurance carriers to be equally aligned with us. We need companies to be thinking about diversity when they think about who they’re staffing their risk management departments with, and we really need to be thinking collectively about how we attract and retain the talent that we need not only to serve the business that we have today but the business that we hope to have in the future.

Q: Is there a way of doing that other than just by discussion? For example, some public entities have policies in place about diversity of the service providers they use.

A: Absolutely, and that was an element of the Equity=Possibility event. A lot of public entities do require that there are minority- or women-owned companies that provide some of the services as part of their contract, so we do see the opportunities for that to continue. One of the other elements that came out of that discussion was oftentimes those tend to be services that are more trades-like versus professional, and if we really want to talk about increasing the economic participation of those underrepresented communities, it really needs to be by making sure that we’re bringing them in to provide and contribute some of those professional services that are required in those contracts.

Q: You still hear people say, ‘Anybody that works hard and is smart enough can succeed here.’ Is there any validity in that?

A: I read Ayn Rand, too. It works really, really well in the book, but I’m not sure that it works so well in practice, because you will always have people who have bias, you’ll always have people who have a preference. Studies tell us people gravitate to people that are like them, so if we’re not really forcing ourselves to think differently and change, we will end up with exactly the same result.

Q: You’ve had a lot of success in your 27 years at Marsh. What attracted you to the business, and what keeps you interested?

A: I didn’t know anybody who worked in insurance, so what attracted me to the business at the time — so, this was 1996 — was an article I read about a digital trading platform that they were investing in. The irony is that it didn’t work at the time. I don’t think it was a lack of the creativity of the solution, but it was absolutely a lack of the ability of technology at the time. I think we’re probably finally there 27 years later. But it was interesting to me, and then what kept me was really just this opportunity to continue to learn. My background was in management liability and I really enjoyed the opportunity to understand from business leaders, how they talked about their business, how they thought about their business, so that was inherently interesting. And then Marsh McLennan’s been a great place to try new things, to be given opportunities to not only leverage the skills that I’ve cultivated but to learn new skills and to take chances and contribute. And the people are great, so that helps as well.