Women in the insurance industry still struggle to reach the top of the corporate ladder, a report by professional services firm PwC said yesterday.

And the industry is one of the least popular with women millennials looking for a career, with 13 per cent saying they would not work in the sector because of its image.

Arthur Wightman, PwC Bermuda insurance and market leader, said: “The benefits of diversity and inclusion within the industry are significant to reinsurer margins and yet the industry has struggled to source and retain a diverse workforce and leadership.

“CEOs recognise the threat and many core strategies now include objectives to solve the imbalance that exists.

“The real challenge for CEOs is to influence change that allows for diversity and inclusion to be part of the DNA of their organisations.

“That requires a response to one of the hardest executive challenges of all — to change culture.”

Mr Wightman was speaking after PwC hosted a round-table discussion on women in leadership in the insurance industry at the Reinsurance Rendez-Vous conference in Monte Carlo.

Kathleen Reardon, CEO of Hamilton Re, said: “Ours is a diverse world. That diversity is recognised in the clients we serve and the employees we hire.

“As women continue to adopt leadership roles in the insurance and reinsurance industry, our opportunity — and our responsibility — is to ensure that the policies and practices that inhibited our past progress don’t inhibit the future progress of others, whether it’s on a gender, race, religion or sexual orientation basis.”

PwC research found that 70 per cent of global insurance CEOs see a lack of availability of key skills was a threat to expansion prospects and that a bigger pool of talent through diversity was crucial to the future.

The report said that 86 per cent of women millennials in insurance said that employer policies on diversity, equality and workforce inclusion was a decisive factor in choosing a new job.

A total of 80 per cent of insurance leaders said they had, or planned to have, policies in place to promote diversity and inclusion.

But 80 per cent of women millennials believed that, while industry chiefs talked about diversity, in reality, opportunities were far from equal.

The PwC report said that measures companies needed to take included setting out the business benefits of diversity and making it part of everyday operations, deal with unconscious bias — a tendency to favour people most like the person making hiring and promotion decisions — and creating a talent watcher at executive level to ensure a mix of backgrounds are given opportunities to progress.

The report also found that nearly half women millennials believed that taking part in flexible working programmes had a detrimental effect on their prospects and that employers had to make sure that flexibility was a key part staff’s working lives.

And it underlined that communication of progress on diversity targets and openness around the process would strengthen brands, both with customers and potential recruits.

Stephen O’Hearn, PwC global insurance leader, said: “At PwC, some of the most coveted roles in our firm are those responsible for leading client relationships.

“The diversity within such roles at PwC is not yet where we would like it to be. In PwC’s insurance practice, we’ve made progress and we will continue to emphasise diversity as we develop our people for these opportunities.”