Insurance leaders must step up to tackle mental ill health

The insurance industry has been “particularly poor” at embracing mental health initiatives, according to Stephen Card, chairman of Carbon Underwriting.

“We have to pull our socks up if we want to catch up with what’s happening elsewhere,” he said.

Speaking on a panel for Intelligent Insurer, Card added that it’s the leaders’ “absolute responsibility” to grasp mental health awareness and do something practical, rather than just put a tickbox exercise in place.

Katarina Archer, client services manager and wellbeing leader at HDI Global UK, agreed.

“It’s not just delegating jobs and doing peer reviews, it’s so much more now. This is not me saying ‘let’s put more pressure on managers’, but managers need to become leaders who are equipped to have these important conversations,” she said.

Kirsty Plank, volunteer at My Black Dog and session moderator, added that it was clear that mental health is such “an important issue for us to be thinking about at work, whether we’re a leader or wherever in the company”.

She added: “It is so important and it’s not something that businesses can afford to ignore.”