Insurance has an unfair reputation as offering dull careers and it must shed that image to attract the best young graduates, according to industry leaders.

A top-level panel at the World Insurance Forum in Dubai told delegates that more time and effort had to go into selling the plus points of an insurance career to bright young people.

"One of the great things about the insurance industry is that it's actually quite fun," Stephen Catlin, CEO of the Bermuda-based Catlin Group, said.

"There are great opportunities to travel and see a lot of different businesses. But the truth is that many people fall into insurance by mistake."

Neill Currie, CEO of Bermuda reinsurer RenaissanceRe, said he was not too concerned about recruiting people who had studied structured insurance courses. "We just require our people to be good thinkers and then we can take them into the RenRe university to teach them about what we do," he added.

Grahame Chilton, CEO of reinsurance brokerage the Benfield Group, said the insurance industry did not get "the number one pick" of top university graduates, because they were lured into the areas of investment banking and law, where they could make higher starting salaries.

"We're not a sexy industry, so we get people from the lower-grade universities, but I think they go on to make better employees, because they've not decided where they want to go.

"People want to see that you have a structured training programme. We have to put more money into educating people into the business. If you cut your training budget, you cut your future."

Mark Byrne, chairman of Bermuda reinsurer FlagstoneRe, said: "We look for people with a Bachelor's, or possibly a Masters degree. If you have those attributes and a high IQ, energy and a desire to achieve, then we feel we can do the rest with what we have in the industry."