The talent shortage is a ‘vicious cycle’ for loss adjusters

Fears surrounding a talent shortage in the loss adjusting sector have been circulating for decades, with Insurance Times reporting as far back as 2008 – at the onset of the recession – about a potential “crisis” in the claims industry if the loss adjuster talent shortfall was not addressed.

Fast forward to 2025 and the same threat still looms. For example, Gallagher Bassett’s The Carrier Perspective: 2025 Claims Insights Whitepaper, published on 12 February 2025, revealed that 72% of UK insurers are facing disruptions in efficient claims management due to labour shortages.

Leion Attard, managing director at loss assessing firm ClaimRite, believes that the shortage of new talent in this particular insurance subsector has become a “vicious cycle” because existing adjusters have been overloaded with cases, leading to high rates of attrition and creating a “build up of cases that are not getting dealt with”.

He said: “There’s a general opinion that adjusters and assessors don’t get on, but actually [that could not] be further from the truth. We work with [them] and having a proper amount of loss adjusters with normal, manageable caseloads is much better for us.

“The problems we face when there’s a lack of adjusters is that they get overstretched – it can cause delays with claims being handled and responded to.”

Attard told Insurance Times that this “lack of decision-making” and “progress” influenced by overburdened loss adjusting teams can lead to policyholders being forced to spend longer in temporary accommodation, which affects them “both physically and mentally”.

After spending more than two years as a senior loss adjuster at AED Adjusting before moving to ClaimRite, Attard explained that he has experienced being overworked to the point of wanting to leave “just to get rid of the massive caseload, move on to another job and start afresh”.

For Attard, this talent conundrum stems from the fact that skilled adjusters and assessors are being recruited from “one skilled position to another and that there’s no one new coming into the industry”.

He added: “The skills are becoming less and less abundant as time goes on.” 

In 2021, loss adjusting company Woodgate and Clark revealed that over 64% of its adjusters were over the age of 50, while 17% were in their thirties. 

Ashley Easen, director of consulting at Gallagher Bassett UK, thinks that several factors are contributing to this specific talent shortage, including limited entry pathways, increasing claim complexity and the retirement of experienced adjusters without adequate succession planning.

She said: “Loss adjusting fees have been declining, leading some to describe [this situation] as a race to the bottom – the impact is becoming increasingly evident.

“The regulatory landscape in loss adjusting has shifted with the introduction of Consumer Duty, advancements in technology, voluntary redundancy and early retirement.

“This has resulted in the departure of some seasoned professionals from the adjusting space, leading to a loss of valuable expertise that could have been used to educate the next wave of adjusters, which is truly unfortunate.”

Developing talent

A huge piece of this talent puzzle is talent development and forging a successful pipeline of candidates.

As a smaller firm based in Wales, with eight employees at the time of writing, Attard explained that growing ClaimRite’s own pipeline of talent is a greater challenge compared to larger entities because the organisation does not have the current staff or resources to dedicate to training entry lever joiners.

He added that the business is also contending with the issue of “fighting over the same gene pool as everyone else in that area”.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times, Luke Brannigan, people development director at Crawford and Company, agreed with Attard that one of the main issues within loss adjusting is recruiting talent to train up while having limited internal resources.

At Crawford and Company, therefore, Brannigan and his colleagues are working to balance recruitment with “opportunities for everyone to develop”, to ensure that existing talent has the necessary critical and communication skills to progress professionally.

Brannigan leads the Crawford and Company Academy, which launched in its current iteration in 2023 – this programme has been accredited by the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters (Cila) for the past two years. In 2025 so far, Brannigan’s team has overseen 487 hours of training, delivered to 109 colleagues.

Prior to joining Crawford and Company in 2022, Brannigan worked as talent development manager at loss adjusting business Sedgwick, with his overall tenure at the firm amounting to nearly five years. During this time, he learned that the key to positive recruitment and preventing attrition was creating worthwhile “employee value propositions” and making “talent fit the organisation”.

He added that when loss adjusting companies are hiring, they should ask themselves “why would bright, enthusiastic, engaged talent come and work for your firm rather than the firm next door?”.

He continued: “The academy evolved from being a training, learning and development piece 10 years ago into a more strategic answer for what we’re trying to do, which is about attraction of talent and development and then deploying it throughout [the] business.”

Gallagher Bassett UK has sought to address loss adjusting talent shortages in a similar fashion to Crawford and Company, by adopting a “grow your own strategy”.

Easen added that providing “structured career pathways, mentorship and workplaces that meet the expectations of the next generation” – including an “essential” focus on ”flexibility, safety and wellbeing” – are vital in mitigating the sector’s talent woes.

She explained: “We’ve decided to recruit talent based primarily on their customer service skills and behaviours, then introduce them to the insurance world, providing both on-the-job and academic training.”

Colin Ganson, director at QuestGates, noted that his firm has also adopted this strategy of looking at broader skill sets initially, rather than just a pure insurance focus.

He said: “As our business has expanded, we believe recruitment must be multilayered, from graduates and apprenticeships, allowing us to attract individuals with skills not just for loss adjusting, but in surveying, engineering, accounting and law.

“When the industry faces challenges like weather related surges and caseloads increase, we believe service shouldn’t just be maintained – it should be better, for both the policyholder and our end client. That’s only possible if adjusters are supported with the right assistance.”

What does the future look like?

Some market commentators point to the use of technology and evolving artificial intelligence (AI) as a further method for closing talent gaps in the loss adjusting sector.

Ganson, for example, told Insurance Times: “The smart use of AI will help to automate some aspects of the claim process, allowing people to focus on the real value-add [elements], which include communication and innovative approaches to cost control.”

John Bissell, executive director at Cila, added: ”Loss adjusting firms are developing ways in which AI can increasingly support [their] role to make it more attractive to young people and enable them to focus on the purpose and value of the role, rather than the administration.

”Cila is [also] reviewing its qualifications framework to ensure it is relevant to future adjusting roles, such as methods of learning, assessment for technical competence and also welfare support for what can be a demanding role.”