For a number of years BFIS has gone into Bermuda’s high schools to talk to the students about careers in insurance and also about scholarships.

However, BFIS has found that the interest in careers in Bermuda’s insurance sector receives much more traction when students are able to talk one-on-one with people actually working in the industry.

So in February 2014, building on the annual presentations an invitation was extended to senior year students at all Bermuda’s high schools — Berkeley Institute, Bermuda High School, Bermuda Institute, CedarBridge Academy, Mount St Agnes Academy, Saltus Grammar School and Warwick Academy — to attend a series of speed-networking events with insurance professionals.

The feedback from those sessions was so good with students generally thrilled to have the opportunity to network with so many insurance professionals that is was decided to make this an annual event.

The sessions are broken into three separate groupings — actuarial and law, accounting and finance and general business/insurance-related — so that students can attend whichever one (or more) might benefit them most. Each speed-networking interview lasts for six minutes before the student moves on to talk to the next professional, with the whole event taking an hour before everyone breaks for lunch and general networking.

Fast-paced and fun, this enables students to talk about their education and career goals with people they have never met before, which challenges them to make every minute count.

Invitations are sent out to guidance counsellors at all the high schools to send their senior students to attend the sessions (six per school per session) which were run during the week of February 24 and professionals from every area of insurance and related industries were invited to volunteer to participate in the session best-suited to their career.

On Monday 24, seven students interested in careers as actuaries or corporate lawyers came along to the BFIS office to talk to five professionals from ASW Law, Arch Re, Aspen, Deloitte and Everest Re. On the Wednesday, 30 students attended a session on accounting and finance, and a similar number of professionals from numerous companies (Ariel Re, Deloitte, EY, Hamilton Re, KPMG, Marsh, Mazars, PwC and Zurich) were on hand to chat to them and advise them about career paths. The event was hosted by PwC.

Finally on the Friday, 27 students came to XL Catlin to find out about insurance careers in general. There were 21 professionals present from AIG, Allied World, Amlin, Aon, Argo Re, Arch, Chubb, Everest, Hamilton, Hannover Re, Marsh, Tokio Millenium, Validus and XL Catlin and the students made the most of the opportunity to connect with so many professionals who were more than happy to chat about career goals and encourage the students. Many of the volunteers were former BFIS Scholars and BFIS Mentor Networking Committee co-chairmen Jonathan Allen and Teniko Eve closed the final session by thanking all the professionals for giving their time, with Teniko Eve noting that he had attended BFIS networking sessions as a student and had found it extremely valuable.