Next spring, students at New England College will be learning about the insurance industry, in a new course offering taught by state employees from the New Hampshire Insurance Department.
The course is being offered through a partnership between the college and the New Hampshire Insurance Department, a state agency that regulates the insurance marketplace. State officials hope it will attract more potential employees into the insurance field, which is experiencing staffing shortages.
“Our mission at the department is to promote and protect the public good by ensuring the existence of a safe and competitive insurance marketplace, and a significant component of that charge is to ensure that the future workforce in the insurance industry is well trained,” said New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner Christopher Nicolopoulos. “Attracting highly educated individuals into the industry – whether as producers or regulators – is critically important to the health of our markets and the furtherance of our consumer protection efforts.”
In the four-credit course, which begins in the 2023 spring semester, students will learn about the nature of risk, risk identification, general risk management techniques, and the management of risk through insurance. It covers why an individual or a corporation purchases insurance, what constitutes an intelligent insurance plan, what products are available in the insurance marketplace and how the New Hampshire Insurance Department regulates those products. A team of insurance experts from the New Hampshire Insurance Department will teach the course.
Students who are interested can do an internship for additional academic credit, and students that complete the course and the internship will have the opportunity to get their insurance licensing exam waived.
“Collectively, our team of experts bring hundreds of years of insurance experience in both the public and private sectors, and we are excited to share that knowledge with students,” said Deputy Insurance Commissioner D.J. Bettencourt.
According to the New Hampshire Insurance Department, all parts of the insurance industry, including Main Street insurance producers, insurance carriers and even regulators, are facing staffing shortages.
“The range of jobs in the insurance industry is large, whether it’s sales, customer service, actuarial and mathematical, fraud investigators, underwriters, etc.,” said Andrew Demers, the department’s communications director. “It’s imperative that we recruit and train the next generation of insurance professionals to continue to have a healthy insurance marketplace as we look to the future.”