Embedded recruitment puts experienced recruiters inside your business, working as your team under your name, on a monthly subscription instead of a fee per hire. You get hiring capacity when you need it, for as long as you need it, without adding permanent headcount.
If you run an insurance, insurtech, fintech or financial services business and have never come across it, you are in good company. In our conversations with founders, CEOs and people leaders across these sectors, most have not. This page aims to explain how embedded recruitment works, what it costs, how fast it starts, how long it runs and when it is the right call.
Embedded recruitment (RaaS) explained for insurance and financial services leaders
How does embedded recruitment work?
A recruiter, or a small team of them, joins your business for an agreed period. They work in your systems, under your brand, alongside your hiring managers. To candidates and colleagues, they are your recruitment team. To you, they are a fixed monthly cost rather than a payroll line, and you can switch the capacity on in days and off again when the plan is delivered.
The difference from an agency is who the recruiter works for. An agency recruiter works a vacancy for several clients at once and is paid when a hire lands. An embedded recruiter works for you, on your plan, every day of the engagement. That changes behaviour: they build your pipeline, not theirs.
What does it cost, and how is it priced?
Our embedded solution is priced on a monthly subscription basis. The amount depends on four things: how many recruiters you need, how senior they are, how long the engagement runs and the level of the roles they will be filling.
We don't have a published rate card, because those four things vary too much between, say, a 40-person MGA hiring six underwriters and a 3,000-person insurer standing up a claims transformation team. We will quote once we know your plan. What matters for a CEO or CFO is that the number is fixed and known before the engagement starts. It is a cost you budget against a hiring plan, not a fee that arrives with every offer letter. If you want to see what your current agency spend looks like against that, our agency fee calculator will do the sums.
How quickly can it start, and how long does it run?
It will depend on the scope of the work, but it is usually possible to get an embedded talent assignment up and running in a matter of days. There is no implementation phase; once we know the scope of the work, the recruiter arrives, gets access to your systems and starts working your hiring plan under your brand.
Engagements vary in length, from a short month-long assignment to a quarter or even a year, and sometimes longer, depending on the hiring plan. A month covers a burst of hiring. A quarter suits a defined push, such as staffing a new team before a product launch. A year suits a business that is building a function and wants recruitment handled while it does. The term follows the plan rather than a standard contract length.
Does it cover contract and temp hiring as well as permanent?
Yes. Our embedded recruiters cover permanent, contract and temporary hiring. That matters in insurance and financial services, where a hiring plan is rarely one type of hire: a core of permanent roles, contractors for a programme, temps to cover a peak in claims or operations. One team, one subscription, all three.
When is embedded recruitment the right call for an insurer or financial services business?
It fits when one of these is true:
Your hiring plan is bigger than your current team can deliver, but not big enough to justify a permanent recruitment hire
You are paying agency fees on roles you could fill yourself with the right person in the seat
You are building a new team or function to a deadline
Your in-house recruiter has left and the plan has not
It does not fit when:
You need one or two hard-to-find senior hires. A specialist recruitment agency is a better option
Your hiring is so steady, year in and year out, that an in-house recruiter is the obvious answer
You want the whole recruitment function run for you end to end. That is recruitment process outsourcing, and we do that too, but it is a different conversation.
How is it different from using an agency or outsourcing recruitment?
An agency finds candidates for a vacancy and charges a fee per hire. Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) takes over your recruitment process end to end, usually for a longer term. Embedded recruitment puts capacity inside your existing team on a subscription, for as long as the plan needs.
| Agency | RPO | Embedded recruitment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the recruiter sits | Outside your business | Runs your process, often with an onsite team | Inside your team, under your brand |
| How you pay | Fee per hire | Longer-term contract | Monthly subscription |
| Typical term | Per vacancy | A year or more | A quarter to a year, sometimes longer |
| Best for | One or two specialist hires | Handing over recruitment end to end | A hiring plan bigger than your team, smaller than a function |
Agency vs RPO vs embedded recruitment.
Most businesses use more than one of these over time: an agency for a senior hire this year, embedded recruiters for a growth plan the next. The question is which one fits the plan you have now. Our hiring models comparison sets all three side by side in more detail.
What should you ask before you sign with anyone?
Ask these of us or of any other embedded talent provider:
Who are the actual recruiters, and have they hired in our sector before?
What happens to the subscription when hiring slows or stops?
Who owns the pipeline and the candidate data when the engagement ends?
What are the notice terms, in both directions?
How will we know it is working, and how often will we see the numbers?
A good answer to all five is a reasonable sign you are talking to the right people.
Talk it through
If you are weighing up whether embedded recruitment fits your plan, tell us the plan. We will say whether it does, and if something else fits better we will say that instead. If you are an insurer, see how embedded recruitment works for insurance businesses first. Vermelo was named Best Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Business at the Global Recruiter Awards 2025 and is ISO 9001 certified, which is to say the process behind the recruiters has been looked at by people who check such things.
FAQ’s
Is embedded recruitment the same as RaaS or recruiter on demand?
Broadly, yes. Recruiter-as-a-Service (RaaS), embedded talent, on-demand recruiters and embedded recruitment all describe the same idea: recruiters inside your business on a subscription basis. Different providers use different labels. We say embedded recruitment and use RaaS only because that is what some people search for.
What size of business uses embedded recruitment?
Our clients range from around 30 people to around 5,000+. At the smaller end it is usually a founder or CEO who needs hiring done properly without building a recruitment team. At the larger end it is a Head of Talent adding capacity for a plan the in-house team cannot absorb.
Does it work alongside an in-house recruitment team?
Yes, and that is the most common set-up. The embedded recruiter takes a defined part of the plan, such as a new function, a region or a contract programme, and works to the same process and reporting as the existing in-house TA team.
Vermelo is a UK talent solutions specialist delivering RPO, Project RPO, MSP, embedded talent (RaaS), total talent and talent advisory & consultancy. Named Best Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Business at the Global Recruiter Awards 2025. Part of the GWV Talent Solutions Group which includes Gerrard White Consulting and FlarePeople.