Changing Workforce: What to Do Now Before Your Best Bodily Injury Claims Adjuster Retires

Preparing for retirement typically means contributing to a 401K, figuring out your cost of living and deciding what you’re going to do with your time once you aren’t occupied 40 hours per week. But for insurance companies, preparing for retirement has taken on a whole new meaning. The insurance industry workforce is changing. Within the past seven years, the number of workers aged 55 and older has increased by 74 percent. In the next few years, that population is expected to continue to grow and 400,000 insurance professionals are expected to retire, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. On the flip side, only 28 percent of claim adjusters are under the age of 35, compared to 35 percent of workers that fall into that age group in the general population. Even though about three-quarters of millennials are staying in their insurance jobs longer than their peers in other industries, there is still a shortage of younger workers in the industry according to PC360. As the workplace continues to evolve, claims organizations are faced with a pressing question: “How do I prepare for when my best and most seasoned adjusters retire?”

The Impact on Bodily Injury Claims

With more adjusters eyeing retirement each year and a younger generation entering the workforce without the knowledge that comes with years of experience in claims handling, the insurance industry could start to see big impacts on claim operations and outcomes, especially when it comes to third party bodily injury claims. Many times, when a carrier’s most seasoned adjusters leave the organization, their knowledge goes out the door with them. Bodily injury adjusters understand so many nuances about evaluating third party bodily injury claims based on their experience, for example, how to accurately assess liability or the best strategies to negotiate successfully with a particularly tough attorney. Losing this knowledge can be disruptive to an organization and could lead to a downturn in results or increased operational inefficiencies. As the aging population starts to retire, the insurance industry will need to bring on new talent, which could mean that carriers will need to make large investments in training in the upcoming years. Third party bodily injury claims are complex, so it can take a long time to get new adjusters up to speed, and even longer to make sure they are consistently and accurately assessing their claims.

Three Ways Technology Can Help Solve These Challenges

As older workers retire and younger employees enter into the insurance sector, the industry will need to figure out how to maintain its seasoned employees’ knowledge while developing and training younger employees to fill in the gaps. Here are three ways insurance carriers can use technology to help solve some of the challenges they are currently facing in the changing workplace:

1. Maintain a Knowledgebase for Best Practices

A liability and injury assessment technology platform can help insurance carriers capture the best practices from their top adjusters throughout the organization. This type of technology platform is set up based on each carrier’s specific requirements and needs in order to deliver the best results. By implementing a technology platform for third party bodily injury claims, carriers can go through an exercise of gathering and documenting their best adjusters’ knowledge, tips and tricks, and automatically share those throughout the organization programmatically.

2. Provide Guidance and Promote Consistency

Technology can help to automate those best practices across the organization so that each adjuster, regardless of age or experience, assesses bodily injury claims consistently. For example, a technology system can help make sure adjusters are assessing liability using a consistent formula by asking adjusters the same questions about each claim every time. Additionally, a technology system can provide in-product guidance that allows adjusters to make decisions based on recommendations derived from the company’s best practices. By considering the key elements about a claim and the injuries, a claim evaluation platform can capture what your top adjusters would do in each unique accident scenario and supply that to every user of the system so that the knowledge and expertise is captured and can be shared across the organization. Key elements of the claim to consider in generating a recommended value may include things like what type of accident, liability duties breached, injury and severity, impact on lifestyle, permanency, and venue.

3. Simplify Training

Implementing easy-to-use technology into a carrier’s bodily injury claims process can help simplify the training process. Instead of training new adjusters on every detail of how the company wants claims processed, they can focus training efforts on using the software platform and following the guidance and best practices already implemented within the application. An easy-to-use software tool can make it faster to get adjusters up and running and can make the carrier more confident that their less-experienced adjusters will be able to produce great results that are consistently in line with the organization’s best practices.

Solving Changing Workforce Challenges

While technology isn’t the only answer to solve the insurance industry’s workforce challenges, it can help put carriers on the right track. Especially when it comes to bodily injury claims, technology can help to document best practices, promote consistency and simplify training, so carriers are better prepared for that day when their best and most seasoned employees start to retire.