Insurance claims work has always depended on experience. Complex coverage decisions, difficult negotiations, large losses and unusual claims often require judgement that is built over years, not learned from a manual. That experience is now becoming harder to replace as senior claims professionals leave the industry and insurers work to build the next generation of talent.
The shift is already visible in the Lloyd’s market. Recent claims workforce research found that the share of claims professionals with more than 15 years of experience fell from 37% in 2023 to 31% in 2025. At the same time, employees with less than three years of experience made up 52% of junior claims roles, compared with 37% two years earlier. The data points to a workforce becoming younger while the pool of highly experienced professionals becomes smaller.
The issue extends beyond age. Insurers are also struggling to maintain the middle of the talent pipeline, where professionals develop the experience needed to take on more complex claims. Recent claims-sector research found that talent attraction and retention was the top business challenge for 68% of respondents in 2026, highlighting how workforce pressure is becoming an operational issue rather than simply an HR concern.
For the global claims workforce, this creates a difficult transition. Insurers need to bring in new talent while retaining experienced professionals long enough to transfer knowledge, and they are doing so at the same time that claims are becoming more data-driven and technology-enabled.
Experience is Becoming a Form of Claims Capacity
The biggest risk is not simply having fewer employees. It is losing the judgement those employees have built over their careers.
A senior claims professional may recognise a coverage issue before it becomes a dispute, understand how a difficult negotiation is likely to develop or identify when a seemingly routine loss could become a much larger liability. Those skills are often built through years of dealing with different policies, customers, legal situations and loss scenarios.
That makes experience a form of claims capacity. When it leaves the organisation, the impact may show up through longer case handling, more reliance on external expertise, higher training requirements or greater pressure on the people who remain.
The problem is becoming more important as insurers face more complex claims and greater demand for faster outcomes. Current workforce research estimates that around 43% of today’s insurance tasks could be automated by 2030, while the skills required in the remaining roles are becoming more technical and specialised.
That suggests the future claims workforce will not simply be a smaller version of the current one. It will need to combine experienced judgement with data, technology and new forms of decision support.
AI is Changing How the Claims Workforce is Built
The challenge facing the global claims workforce is not simply that experienced professionals are retiring. It is that insurers are trying to replace that experience while the work itself is changing. Claims teams increasingly need people who can work with data, understand AI-assisted workflows, manage complex cases and still apply the judgement that cannot easily be automated.
Recent workforce research shows the pressure clearly. In the Lloyd’s market, claims professionals with more than 15 years of experience fell from 37% in 2023 to 31% in 2025, while people with less than three years of experience now account for 52% of junior claims roles, up from 37%. The same research identifies the mid-career group as one of the hardest segments to recruit.
That creates a gap between bringing people into claims and getting them to the level where they can handle difficult work independently. It takes time to build knowledge of policy language, coverage disputes, negotiation, litigation and complex loss scenarios. If experienced employees leave faster than that knowledge is transferred, insurers can lose capability even when their overall headcount remains stable.
The problem is broader than the Lloyd’s market. Global insurance research also points to veteran employees leaving while recruitment struggles to keep pace, with insurers facing a mismatch between the skills entering the industry and the technical, regulatory and business knowledge required for modern insurance roles.
AI Can Preserve Experience but Change How People Learn
Artificial intelligence could help insurers manage part of the knowledge gap. AI can make historical decisions, internal guidance and past claims information easier to find, allowing newer employees to access knowledge that might otherwise remain with experienced professionals. Research on the insurance workforce suggests AI can also support knowledge transfer and phased retirement by making experienced employees’ knowledge more accessible across the organisation.
But there is a complication, claims professionals have traditionally developed judgement by working through routine cases before gradually taking on more difficult ones. If AI automates too much of that early work, junior employees may have fewer opportunities to build the practical experience that eventually allows them to handle complex claims themselves.
That creates a new workforce challenge: how to use AI to accelerate learning without removing the experiences people need in order to learn the job.
Research on the next-generation insurance workforce estimates that 43% of today’s insurance tasks could be automated by 2030, while highlighting the growing importance of digital and AI fluency, adaptability and higher-level judgement.
For the global claims workforce, that points toward a different model of development. Junior professionals may spend less time on repetitive processing, but they will need more structured exposure to complex decisions, stronger coaching and clearer pathways to build technical expertise.
The goal is not simply to replace retiring claims professionals with technology. It is to use technology to preserve what can be captured, while deliberately developing the judgement and experience that still needs to be learned by people.