The wider labour market sets the backdrop for every insurance hire you make today. Recruiters describe the current market as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment but only slight increases in redundancies, and vacancies now sitting below pre-pandemic levels Low Pay Commission Report 2025, GOV.UK. That caution shows up in the monthly data too: the KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs continues to track a hesitant hiring picture across sectors KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs June 2026.
Not every corner of the market is quiet. The largest volume increase in vacancies recently came in the professional, scientific and technical activities sector, which rose by 5,000 ONS – Vacancies and jobs in the UK: November 2025. Insurance sits close to this world: it's professional, data-heavy and increasingly technical. So while headcount growth is measured, the demand for the right skills is very much alive.
Two forces are reshaping the roles insurance firms hire for. The first is specialist technology. Even in a subdued 2025, there were clear demand hotspots for skills including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly (tech recruitment outlook 2026). Insurance runs on all four: pricing models, claims automation, policy platforms and the security that protects sensitive customer data.
The second force is the sharp rise in AI capability. Demand for AI skills grew nearly 200% in a year The Register (Accenture data), and the way firms build those teams is changing. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. That matters for complaints-led hiring, because the people who redesign a frustrating claims journey are often a mix of seasoned experts and newer talent you grow yourself.
There's a warning sign here too. Entry-level hiring is under pressure across the economy: Adzuna has seen a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, with graduates facing the toughest job market since 2018 techUK – What's actually happening with entry-level and graduate jobs?. If you shrink the bottom of the pipeline, you shrink the future frontline: the very people who answer the calls and resolve the complaints that decide whether a customer renews.
Start with your complaints data, not your job description. Group the last quarter of complaints into themes: slow claims decisions, confusing policy wording, poor communication, repeat contact. Each theme points to a capability gap. Slow claims may need more skilled assessors or better automation. Confusing communication may need frontline hires with genuine clarity and empathy. When you hire against the theme, every new person has a job that connects directly to why customers leave.
Then build the skill definition carefully. With hard-to-fill vacancies still common in technical fields (70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy in the most recent comparison) AI Labour Market Survey 2025 (Gardiner & Theobald), GOV.UK / publishing.service.gov.uk, you can't afford a vague brief. Be specific about the outcome you want the hire to own: a lower repeat-contact rate, a faster first response, a clearer set of customer letters.
Finally, close the loop. Complaints-led hiring only works if you measure the effect. Watch the complaint theme you hired against and check it shrinks over the following months. If it does, you have proof that better hiring lifts retention. If it doesn't, your next brief gets sharper.
Once you know the skills your complaint themes demand, the task is finding those people quickly, before the next renewal window closes. That's where we help. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell us the complaint theme you want to fix, and we'll start building your shortlist with Reed.ai.
