About us

Supporting multicultural inclusion in the insurance industry

How we’re making an impact

Who we are and how we’re creating action

We are the industry-wide, independent, volunteer-run network that supports multicultural inclusion across the insurance sector.

We promote multicultural inclusion and progression, engage with allies, and celebrate the benefits of inclusion and diversity in the industry.

Download our brochure

How we started

iCAN was founded in **2017** by a group of insurance professionals who came together as volunteers to consider some of the challenges facing ethnic minorities and those from outside of the UK working in the insurance industry, progression into senior roles and attracting a diverse talent pool to the sector.
An opportunity arose to work together to face these challenges around multicultural inclusion: a focus on diverse leadership within organisations, the inequalities that exist throughout all job levels and lack of visible role models. By establishing a network, which would allow us to work with colleagues across the industry, we have been able to create partnership opportunities for existing Employee Resource Groups and Champions, provide a platform from which to highlight the importance of multicultural inclusion, and promote concepts such as intersectionality and commonality, all crucial aspects of successful inclusion.
2019 was our **“Year of Impact”**, creating awareness in the market, leading to multiple partnerships and sponsorships with the Chartered Insurance Institute, Aston Charles Recruitment and iWIN & PWC.
With the success of 2019, it was time to turn our rhetoric into action, dubbing 2020 as our **“Year of Action.”**
We hope you can join us in continuing to create impact and action with diversity and inclusion within the insurance industry.

Our highlights

2,000+

Members and counting

70+

Events held within the UK

15

Diversity & Inclusion networks supported

4,500+

Followers on social media

Our vision

iCAN is an influential, volunteer-run network which advises and supports multicultural inclusion and diversity within the insurance sector. Our goal is to promote multicultural awareness and drive engagement within the insurance industry to help the sector employ the best and brightest people from all walks of life and backgrounds and to promote a culture of inclusion.

To achieve this we aim to promote:

Advocacy

By challenging the perceptions and misconceptions of the insurance industry amongst new multicultural talent, and focusing on the positives of building a career within the sector.

Collaboration

Through connecting with multicultural networks from other industries such as legal, banking and public sectors to learn from their experiences and successes to achieve our goals. We work with allies and other diversity and inclusion networks to address intersectionality and promote understanding across all facets of diversity.

Awareness

Bringing the insurance industry together from apprentices to boards to share best practice and ideas for promoting multicultural inclusion.

Issues facing the industry

In respect of multicultural inclusion, there are three key issues facing the insurance sector at the current time.

These include:

Leaders

There are few leaders from culturally diverse backgrounds represented within the insurance industry. Given the global nature of the business environment and diversity of our client base, there is a need for this imbalance to be reconsidered. It is important for organisations to recognise the importance of being able to reflect the diversity of their clients amongst their own talent. With ever greater globalisation, there is a significant opportunity for the industry to achieve greater productivity and performance and through an inclusive and diverse workforce.

Industry Networks

Within the insurance community of carriers, brokers, MGA’s and service providers there are currently only a handful of multicultural specific Employee Resource Groups (ERG’s), or individual ‘Champions’. These are not connected and tend to operate solely within their internal organisation, with little or no outside ability to influence industry-wide change, or access to shared resources and networking opportunities, and the benefits they can bring.

Role Models

The need for visible multicultural role models also became apparent, particularly when considering the insurance sector’s difficulties in attracting young talent to the industry, and retaining employees from a multicultural background.

Our Sponsors

iCAN is a volunteer-run organisation, relying on the generous support of sponsors. We would like to thank the following organisations for supporting iCAN. If you would like to support iCAN financially or through a gift in kind of goods or services, please contact us.