Death of an (insurance) salesman?

Working in a sales or marketing role within Scotland's insurance industry is an increasingly shaky place to be.

Standard Life has been slowly paring back its sales and marketing workforce since late-2008, and the latest batch of redundancies has hit this area fairly hard. Similarly, as Aegon continues to cut, six sales centres - including the one in Edinburgh - are due to be closed.

Sadly, this looks to be a developing trend, with few firms north of the border looking to recruit sales staff currently.

"There are not a huge number of insurance sales roles based in Scotland any more," says Harris Keillar, managing director of specialist insurance recruiters Keillar Resourcing in Edinburgh. "There's a much bigger market along the M62 corridor, for which firms prefer to have people based in the north of England rather than in Scotland."

It's not an entirely bleak prognosis, he adds, with a steady flow of insurance sales roles occurring north of the border.

Esure, in particular, has reiterated its desire to recruit and expects to benefit from the fall-out from its competitors in Scotland.

Unfortunately, these numbers fail to match the redundancies.

"I'm seeing increasing numbers of people coming out of sales and into the operational side of things, where there's still a healthy number of jobs," says one Scottish recruiter, who declined to be named.

In this highly competitive marketplace, it's therefore integral for sales staff to have an edge over their peers. Getting more qualifications under your belt is the easiest way of doing this, suggests Keillar.

"Because most sales roles now have a very strong investment bias, getting something like the Investment Management Qualification can definitely help," he says. "There's still a shortage of experienced sales staff with relevant qualifications under their belt."