Over the next decade, millennials will start to make up the bulk of the workforce and insurers need to step up their ESG investments to attract top talents from this new generation of professionals, said Eastspring Investments chief investment officer Virginie Maisonneuve.

Speaking at the Insurance investment Summit yesterday, Ms Maisonneuve stressed that it was important to understand the motivations of this new demographic that represents the future of the workforce.

According to Ms Maisonneuve, 75% of the US workforce by 2030 will be millennials, and on a global scale 35% by 2020.

“It's really important to emphasize that this is a very different generation. Top concerns are about purpose. So if you have a firm that only thinks about money and doesn’t have a sense of purpose it's going to be hard to keep them,” she said.

“You’ll have them for maybe two or three years and then they’ll move on and go somewhere else. And money is not the driving factor for many of them. It’s very different.”

She added these millennials tend to align their core values with consumerism, with many of their core values associated with ESG related concerns such as climate change and income equality.

Ms Maisonneuve also said 72% of people today believe that sustainability is a core factor when assessing whether a company is worth investing in.

This is in line with the global trend that ESG investments are on the rise.

According to a report by KPMG, ESG investments in 2017 grew 25% from 2015 to $23tn, accounting for about one-quarter of all professionally managed investments globally.

While sustainability is important, having investments in the infrastructure necessary to mitigate the effects of climate change is also important. Ms Maisonneuve pointed out that while asset managers were generally aware of this, only a third of insurers said they have climate-aware assets.

Based on the priorities of millennials, this could put insurers at a disadvantage when competing with other sectors to attract top talents.