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INSURANCE
Cyber security recruitment for insurance
Insurance sits between banking and the mid-market: regulated enough to need real governance, rarely resourced like a bank. Most insurance briefs we take are for people who have to cover more ground than their job title suggests.
What these teams hire
- SECURITY RISK
- Cyber risk managers and information security officers, often the senior-most security voice in the business.
- GRC & ASSURANCE
- Policy, control assurance and audit interface work against ISO 27001 and regulatory expectations.
- SECURITY OPERATIONS
- Smaller in-house SOC teams, or the internal owner of an outsourced MSSP relationship.
- THIRD-PARTY RISK
- Broker, administrator and outsourced-provider assessment. Insurance runs on intermediaries, which makes this unusually material.
- CLOUD & ENGINEERING
- Cloud security engineers supporting core system modernisation programmes.
- FIRST SECURITY HIRE
- The head of information security who has to build the function, not inherit one.
What is different about hiring here
The defining feature is breadth. An insurance security hire is often expected to write policy, run vendor assurance, answer the regulator, oversee the MSSP and advise on a core system migration. That suits a particular kind of candidate — pragmatic, comfortable without a team — and frustrates specialists who want depth. Screening for that appetite is most of the job.
The second is the intermediary chain. Brokers, third-party administrators and claims partners hold sensitive data outside the insurer’s control, so third-party risk maturity matters more than in most sectors. Candidates who have run supplier assurance properly, rather than issuing questionnaires, are the ones worth interviewing.
The market, honestly
Insurers compete for the same risk and GRC candidates as banks, usually without matching the package, so the winning argument is scope and influence rather than money. We position roles that way deliberately, and it works when the reporting line genuinely supports it.
Where an insurer wants a first security hire, expectations need calibrating early. The market for people who have built a function from nothing and stayed to run it is small, and the alternative — a strong second-in-command from a larger insurer — is usually the better and faster answer.
A single hire cannot own governance, operations, vendor risk and cloud architecture. We will help rank those before the search rather than present candidates against an impossible brief.
Where we recruit
Cape Town and Johannesburg across South Africa, and London and the wider United Kingdom.
Common questions
Do you work with short-term and life insurers?
Both, along with asset managers and insurance brokers. The regulatory framing differs but the hiring problem — broad scope, lean team — is consistent.
What does an insurance security team typically look like?
Frequently a head of information security, one or two risk or GRC specialists, and an outsourced SOC. Larger insurers add in-house operations and cloud engineering. We scope the existing shape before advising on the hire.
Is financial services experience essential?
Helpful for regulatory fluency, not essential for engineering roles. For second-line risk and assurance we lean towards candidates with regulated-sector background because the audit and reporting cadence is a large part of the work.
Can you help define the role before we advertise?
Yes, and we prefer it. A short briefing conversation usually saves more time than it costs, particularly for a first security hire.
Explore further
Talk to us about your search
A short conversation is usually enough to tell you whether we can help.