The Swiss insurance jobs market for relocating professionals

Out of all the financial sectors, the market for the recruitment of professionals in Switzerland, demand in the insurance sector remains strong. This can be attributed to a number of factors including the perception and popularity of the Alpine state as a location to domicile the insurance requirements of companies and investments, the traditional Swiss expertise in insurance & re-insurance and the overall stability of the region.

In essence the recruitment of external professionals occurs when the local market has reached capacity or the required expertise can only be found outside Switzerland. With the giant insurance firms, as with most other industries, the focus is upon growth in the emerging markets - often the talent required already has skills and networks based there.

For example the majority of the business development jobs, Swiss insurance firms have mandated to us recently, are all focused upon growing new channels of revenue from the Asian and South American markets. Individuals who can show the way to the new emerging wealth in the East are particularly sought after.

The other main areas of new recruitment in the Swiss insurance sector can be loosely split into three other "groups" of experience and skills.

For the professional risk management and underwriting expert the "hot" areas include property underwriting as Switzerland is a preferred location for the domicile of such projects / investments and individuals who can mould the overall risk framework in an international context. On multiple occasions we have been asked to identify multilingual, networked applicants with expertise in COSO framework development.

There is a nearly constant level of demand for skilled actuaries and pricing experts - often within an international context. Particularly sought after are Life Actuarial Reporting professionals who have experience in reporting around solvency based criteria. Re-insurance treaty pricing gurus are always welcomed as well - across all types and forms of policy and none standard treaties like aggregate loss of adverse development covers etc

Finally on the support side there is and will always be a need for skilled accountancy professionals who have worked in the insurance industry. What is needed is multilingual skills, exposure to insurance - especially those who can account for, monitor and model the business activities of international departments and report on them using commonly recognized international accounting standards (US GAAP, IFRS etc).

Outside these main areas there are a multitude of other insurance jobs in Switzerland. However those professionals planning to relocate must recognize there is a well developed and skilled local market, they will require French and or German for many roles (and to really fit in Swiss way of life) and that the market remains very competitive.