Young professionals enlightened Rotarians on how to break into the insurance industry yesterday.

The talk came at the start of Insurance Career Month, an American initiative adopted by local businesses to help combat a growing ‘talent crisis’.

In the US insurance industry, researchers have noticed that as baby-boomers retire and millennials enter the workforce, the new generation is not interested in insurance careers, which they deem “boring”.

But the industry needs these “digital natives” to help them to stay ahead of the newest technologies and respond to risks presented by the digital world.

Hamilton Re employees and self-labelled millennials, Ebony Brockington, Justin Levine and Zuri Phillip, walked the audience through their individual journeys, highlighting the importance of their work globally.

Hoping to promote the idea of insurance, they attempted to dispel perceptions of the industry by labelling it as fun, inspiring and innovative.

Mr Levine, VP Casualty Underwriter called it a “stable, rewarding and limitless career”.

He came to Bermuda two-and-a-half years ago through a recruiter who specialises in offshore placements and said that Bermuda was a different market to the US or Britain.

While entry-level jobs in the Bermuda insurance market are scarce, Mr Levine urged graduates to gain experience overseas after university, saying going abroad presents an excellent opportunity to gain experience, make industry connections and come back to Bermuda with a competitive resume.

He said that his experience had been the opposite of boring and he loved being able to work with “like-minded, curious people that leverage technology to enhance the way risk is analysed”.

“Computing power allows us to slice and dice data in ways that empower us to make underwriting decisions that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to,” he said, adding that his generation were invaluable in the face of new challenges such as cyber liability, which covers costs of “identity theft due to hacking”.

Mr Levine said: “My co-workers and I view insurance as the oil that lubricates the world’s economic and industrial machines.

“Without it, society as we know it would come to a grinding halt.”

Ebony Brockington, an assistant underwriter at Hamilton Re, said she loved her job and the opportunities it had afforded her.

“What I love most is knowing that the industry I’m in helps the community and people around the world live comfortably,” she told the audience.

Zuri Phillip, a junior risk analyst, said the opportunities were “endless”.

Ms Philip said: “It inspires me to know that I am working under two female executives, Kathleen Reardon and Vanessa Hardy-Pickering,” the CEO and CFO of Hamilton Re respectively.

“This is something that pushes me to work harder because I know I can be in a position like theirs one day.”

Last year, millennials surpassed baby-boomers as the most populous generation. More than half of the world’s population is under 30 and of Hamilton Re’s 44 employees, there are 14 under the age of 35.

The Bermuda-based company will be one of almost 400 tweeting and posting information about the insurance and reinsurance industry using the hashtag “#careertrifecta”.