The "single biggest issue" facing the insurance business today is a shortage of intellectual capital--a problem exacerbated by the massive loss of life suffered in the World Trade Center destruction, says Alice Schroeder, executive director and insurance industry analyst for New York-based Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
The erosion is a legacy of a long soft market when the insurance business failed to invest in talented people, she told the annual convention of the Des Plaines, Ill.-based National Association of Independent Insurers meeting here this week.
Now, in the wake of the World Trade Center attack, insurance firms severely afflicted, like Aon and Marsh, with "staggering loss" of life and experience--losses that impact others in the business who depended on them--must replace those people.
