If you were to ask most business school students to name the most sophisticated institutional investors in the world, few will say "insurance companies." And yet, insurers allocate trillions of dollars across fixed income, private credit, mortgages, structured securities, and alternative investments — all while balancing policyholder obligations, regulatory capital requirements, and statutory accounting standards that make the job as intellectually demanding as anything on Wall Street.
Nowhere is that reality more visible than in Iowa. The state is home to thousands of insurance and financial services companies, and Des Moines ranks among the most important insurance capitals in the country. A little known fact across the country is that the state's flagship business school, the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business, has built two of the nation's most effective talent pipelines into the industry: the Vaughan Institute of Risk Management and Insurance and the Hawkinson Institute of Business Finance.
Institutional Investor spoke with Jim Lewis, Executive Director of the Vaughan Institute; Brian Richman, Director of the Hawkinson Institute; and Lisa Stange, a highly respected insurance investment professional who spent more than 25 years in industry leadership roles —including Chief Investment Officer positions at Homesteaders Life Company and EMC Insurance Companies — and who now serves as Independent Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines and on Tippie's Finance Advisory Board.
An Ecosystem, Not Just a Curriculum
The Vaughan Institute has grown into the third-largest Risk Management & Insurance program in the United States, according to Business Insurance's annual ranking, and holds the Global Center of Insurance Excellence designation. But Lewis is quick to point out that the numbers understate what the Institute actually does.
"We are much more than an academic program — we create and manage a collaborative innovation ecosystem that connects students with faculty, alumni, employers, entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, and global thought leaders," Lewis says. "Students don't become future leaders simply by studying the industry; they become leaders by working alongside it."
That means students solve real client problems, present to executives, compete in case competitions, and travel abroad for industry immersion. During the institute's London program, students partnered with Willis Towers Watson on AI and insurance innovation challenges while engaging with leaders from Lloyd's Lab and the broader London market. "They weren't simply observing the industry — they were contributing to it," Lewis says.
Notably for investment employers, roughly 85% of the Institute's Risk Management & Insurance majors pursue a second major, which most commonly Finance. "We believe the best risk professionals are exceptional business professionals first," Lewis explains.
Leveling the Playing Field
The Hawkinson Institute, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2024, attacks the talent question from a different angle. It was founded — as one of the first programs of its kind in the country — to open doors to investment banking and other high-visibility finance careers that historically belonged to graduates of elite private universities.
"If you were an undergrad at Harvard or Penn or Duke, there was always a clear path into investment banking," Richman says. "That wasn't historically the case for students coming out of state schools like Iowa, and so the Hawkinson Institute was created to level the playing field for our students."
Richman, who spent 13 years in banking — starting as an analyst at Lehman Brothers and ultimately becoming a managing director and partner at De La Rosa & Co. — hand-picks ambitious, intellectually curious students early in their academic careers and accelerates their training in accounting, corporate valuation, financial markets, M&A, and modeling, along with the interpersonal and interview skills to compete for the most selective seats in finance. The results speak for themselves: 100% of Hawkinson scholars graduate with full-time offers, landing at firms such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Evercore.
"They're kids who grew up in Iowa and elsewhere, including many first-generation college students who arrive at the university with zero knowledge of investment banking," Richman says. "Shepherding those students onto what, for some of them, can be life-altering career paths, is enormously satisfying."
The Pipeline Into Insurance Investing
Increasingly, those two pipelines converge on insurance. Over the last couple of years, Richman says, 10–20% of each Hawkinson cohort has declared a second major in Risk Management & Insurance alongside Finance — often by the start of sophomore year, before they've taken a single insurance course. He credits family and professional connections, early internships at firms like UFG and Cottingham & Butler, and freshman-year exposure through the Financial Management Association and Vaughan Institute programming.
The career paths that follow reach deep into the insurance investment world. Roughly one Hawkinson graduate per year places into a Financial Institutions Group at a major bank covering insurance or insurtech — sometimes recruited by alumni such as Josh Simpson at Goldman Sachs, one of the top M&A bankers in the insurance space. Farther downstream, those bankers flow into insurance and insurance-adjacent roles at firms including Carlyle, Apollo, Warburg Pincus, and Global Atlantic. Others move into asset management and equity research at top insurers such as Principal — particularly the growing number of alumni choosing to return to Iowa after starting careers in New York or Chicago. And Hawkinson students who opt out of banking altogether commonly take investing roles in direct lending, commercial real estate, fixed income, or private equity at companies like Principal and Aegon/Transamerica.
For Lewis, the bigger obstacle isn't opportunity, but rather visibility. "The industry's biggest challenge is awareness rather than opportunity," he says. "Many students don't realize that insurance companies are among the world's largest institutional investors. Once they understand the scale, sophistication, and career opportunities, interest grows quickly."
Thinking in Systems
What makes insurance investing distinct — and what makes it hard to teach — is that portfolio decisions never happen in isolation. "Insurance investing requires a systems perspective because investment decisions are inseparable from underwriting, enterprise risk, regulation, capital management, ratings, liquidity, and long-term policyholder obligations," Lewis says.
To drive that home, the institute's executive in residence, Fred Crawford, former president and CFO of Aflac, teaches students what he calls the Financial Risk Mosaic: the idea that successful insurance leaders continually balance the interests of shareholders, policyholders, regulators, rating agencies, employees, distribution partners, and customers while making prudent long-term capital allocation decisions.
That framing shapes how both institutes think about artificial intelligence. Vaughan integrates AI throughout its curriculum — in underwriting, investments, claims, and emerging risks — while emphasizing responsible innovation. Richman takes a pragmatic view for banking-bound students: AI is a tool analysts must master, but "analysts still have to know what they're looking at" and be able to judge whether AI-generated models and data are accurate. He also notes structural limits on automation: banking is a heavily regulated industry, and firms that stop training junior talent will struggle to develop the senior advisors whose industry insight — in insurance and elsewhere — is what clients actually pay for.
"AI changes where young professionals create value," Lewis adds. "Communication, leadership, adaptability, ethical judgment, and critical thinking become even more valuable."
The View From the Industry
Stange has watched these programs pay off from the hiring side. In her experience, graduates of risk and insurance programs "enter the workforce with a stronger appreciation for the relationship between risk, capital, and investment management" and are better prepared to contribute across underwriting, actuarial science, enterprise risk management, and asset management.
She's blunt about the industry's core problem: too many talented students never consider it. "Many business school graduates are naturally drawn toward more visible career paths such as investment banking or public equities, while insurance is often overlooked or misunderstood," she says. Yet the investment function inside an insurer demands sophistication across commercial mortgages, direct lending, structured securities, and public markets — all aligned to liabilities, regulatory capital, and statutory accounting.
"I often describe insurance asset management as one of finance's best-kept secrets," Stange says. "The challenge for our industry is making sure students discover it before graduation."
A Message to Allocators
Both directors close with the same appeal to the professionals who will hire their students: engage early. Lewis encourages industry leaders to view students "not simply as future hires but as future partners," arguing that organizations investing in mentorship, internships, and experiential learning will attract the best talent for decades to come.
Richman's pitch is simpler. Hawkinson students match graduates of any U.S. university in ambition and critical thinking, and generally exceed them in work ethic and technical finance skills. "Plus," he says, "they tend to be just really nice kids." Whether they arrive in insurance straight out of college or a job or two later, he expects many of them to become "the next generation of leaders in the insurance space."
In a state where insurance is the biggest industry, that's not a hope. It's a pipeline already flowing.
Join Institutional Investor at the inaugural Midwest Insurance Forum on September 9 in West Des Moines Iowa.
Thank you to the contributors of this article:
Jim Lewis, Executive Director, Vaughan Institute and Adjunct Instructor, University of Iowa
Brian Richman, Professor of Practice, Department of Finance and Director of the Hawkinson Institute, University of Iowa
Market Intelligence Is Independent of the Institutional Investor Magazine Newsroom.
