Dive In Festival 2024

In 2024 the festival will focus on the theme of 'A Sustainable Future: The Next 10 Years', urging businesses to see diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) not just as a moral duty but as a key driver for long-term success.

Evaluating the industry’s progress

In previous years the festival has explored how organisations can embrace a more diverse and inclusive workforce and build braver, psychologically safe work cultures – both on and offline – that truly allow people to feel safe, valued, respected and free to express themselves. In 2023 that progressed to focusing on encouraging those across the commercial and operational side of the insurance industry to action change that will encourage greater inclusivity and drive innovation.

Now, in 2024's milestone moment, the agenda moves to evaluating the industry’s progress in embracing DE&I, recognising that DE&I is crucial for leveraging underrepresented talent and fostering innovation to tackle complex global challenges in cybersecurity, global health, AI, and climate change.

Dive In marks its 10th year by reflecting on the insurance sector's DE&I efforts and calling for diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies for sustained business success.

The Dive In Festival is looking ahead to the next 10 years of fostering innovation to address global challenges through inclusion; and it is committed to fostering a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the industry, unlocking the potential of every individual for a sustainable future.

The festival will strive to help create cultures and working practices that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) at all seniority levels to drive innovation and address global challenges, with executives inherently accountable for forward-thinking strategies.

Objectives for Dive In 2024

General objectives and year-round activity

• Increase awareness of diversity and inclusion topics to progress the industry towards an inclusive and high performing culture
• Connect talent in our sector to senior leaders across the globe to enable the market / insurance to become a destination for global talent
• Enable Dive In participants to take part in year-round action to increase impact and personal contribution to culture
• Attract new talent to our industry to meet social mobility and diversity ambitions to improve representation
• Achieve high attendance and active participation through high quality and consistent events
• Bolster the reputation of insurance as an industry by demonstrating global collaboration on inclusion.

Dive In across the globe

• Ensure the quality of the Dive In brand is maintained by creating carefully curated, high quality events that move beyond panel discussions
• Target C-suite executives to attend and speak at Dive In Festival events, increasing percentage of C-suite attendance to 5%

In new countries

• Consider diverse ways to promote events that drive attendance, aiming for a minimum of 50 attendees for each event
• Consider ways to build momentum for the diversity and inclusion agenda.

In existing Dive In countries

• Focus on ways to attract new audiences beyond the ‘converts’, increasing the percentage of those who have never attended Dive In before globally to 75%
• Diversify attendance by targeting individuals outside the insurance industry, aiming for a minimum of 10% participation from the broader business sector.

2024 festival - very much hybrid

With the success in recent years that has come from embracing running the festival with events delivered both physically and virtually, the 2024 festival continues to evolve with all events now either taking place in hybrid form (delivered physically and virtually streamed) or solely online.

A hybrid festival allows for events to be both delivered and attended globally with the additional option for speakers to be based in different international locations.

In 2023, the festival had 31,000 global attendees, engaging in 135 events from 37 countries around the world.

Dive In is the sector’s only international DE&I festival that runs concurrently in multiple organisations across all continents. The festival raises awareness and builds momentum, and aims to engage and educate people within the Lloyd’s market on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in insurance by providing people with understanding, knowledge and the tools to implement positive change. It helps promote a different view of insurance to a variety of stakeholders and to prospective employees both within and outside the industry.

Dive In recognises that the global risk industry is facing complex challenges such as climate change and cyber crime. In order to attract the very best talent to keep pace with the rate of change, insurance needs to focus on its reputation as a great sector to work in. This means looking beyond traditional definitions of diversity to level the playing field for talent comprehensively including LGBT+, Disability, Race/Ethnicity, Social Mobility, Gender, Physical Health and Wellbeing, Intersectionality, Mental Health, Generations/Age, Neurodiversity, Family/Carers, Global Inclusion and Religion.

Dive In promotes year-round best practice in diversity and inclusion with tools and advice that culminate in an annual three-day festival in September. Events are hosted in insurance companies, brokers, underwriters and associated service providers, of all types and sizes, around the world.

Originally conceived, in London in 2015, by DE&I strategy steering group,  Inclusion@Lloyd’s, a collaboration between the Corporation of Lloyd’s, IUA, LIIBA, and the Lloyd’s Market Association, Dive In has now grown far beyond its roots to become an award-winning global movement that is embraced by the wider insurance industry.

Inclusion at Lloyd’s also supports the insurance partner networks; GIN, iDAWN, iCAN, NGIN, Insurance Families Network, LINK.

Dive In's vision is that insurance is recognised as a progressive industry where workplace cultures create a level playing field for talent, attracting the very best people. Its mission is to enable people to achieve their potential by raising awareness of the business case and promoting positive action for diversity in all its forms.

Find out more

• 2023 Festival in Review
• Event Reports