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> Between May 2025 and May 2026, employment in the sector dropped a staggering 21 percent, according to BLS data. Yeah sure. I mean, same reason why HN readers

by dash2 15d ago

> Between May 2025 and May 2026, employment in the sector dropped a staggering 21 percent, according to BLS data. Yeah sure. I mean, same reason why HN readers hate AI, right? It replaces their jobs. (Obviously the difference is that the poor old claims adjusters didn't spend the last two decades "disrupting" every other industry and telling everyone else to "learn to code". Ha! If you hear a faint high noise, that's the sound of the rest of the world playing a violin, made of highly disruptive nanomaterials.)

piltdownman 15d ago
The difference being that the role of Engineer wasn't conceived as a layer of friction between consumers and their statutory rights to the point where a U.S. Senate subcommittee probe (Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management) and state-level legal crackdowns were necessary to try and address what constituted systematic fraud by property/casualty insurance corporations. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-chairs-hearing-that-exposes-insurance-fraud-by-major-corporations/ https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-chairs-hearing-that-exp... The California Department of Insurance characterized State Farm's tactics as "burying survivors in red tape at the worst moments of their lives" https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2026/release019-2026.cfm https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2... Indeed, some of the core violations could be simply mandated as part of the inviolable system guardrails of an LLM - e.g. failed to begin investigating claims within 15 days, failed to accept or deny claims within 40 days, and failed to pay accepted claims or provide written notice of the need for additional time within 30 days, as required by law. And at the end of the day, whatever weighting issues an LLM for Insurance Claim Adjustment has, it certainly won't steal the money and run off to a Casino with it https://www.nicb.org/news/regional-news/broward-insurance-adjuster-stole-600k-hurricane-ian-victims-authorities-say https://www.nicb.org/news/regional-news/broward-insurance-ad...
nvahalik 15d ago
AI isn’t replacing adjusters. Anecdotally, many of them are aging out and the demands of adjusters are increasing while the pay hasn’t necessarily gone up. While technically you don’t have to know the ins and outs of construction, it helps a lot and there are just not a lot of people who have that knowledge. And if they do, they often go into construction themselves or sell roofs. Both of which can be far more lucrative. On top of that, claims software has a lot of automation but very little real AI surface area. A lot of the things AI is good at (text generation) must have certain verbiage or use legally approved templates. Granted, this may not be the case for all verticals, but this is just my observation from 20 years. (Mostly in smaller IA firms and state-based institutions). Also, my wife has pointed out that there haven’t been any major cats in the last few years. Katrina kept people working for years. A lack of big storms has also contributed to this.
- dspillett 15d ago
  > AI isn’t replacing adjusters. > Anecdotally, many of them are aging out Ageing and out and neither being replaced directly or reduce numbers coming in at the bottom/mid as others move up, is still a drop in people. If part of the reason there is less need to bring people in lower down is that a few are being expected to do the work of a few more due to automation via AI, then that is AI replacing them, just not quite as directly as “we need less people as AI makes each more efficient so there are redundancies”.
  - nvahalik 15d ago
    But that's the thing—there isn't any real automation for this. An adjuster has to physically go out to someone's property. They have to take pictures. They have to inspect things. They have to coordinate with 3rd parties if necessary (like engineers). There isn't a whole lot of room for automation in much of this. Underwriting on the other hand, that is a different story.
- dash2 15d ago
  20% aged out in one year?
mrweasel 15d ago
There are probably two camps in IT (in terms of hating AI). One is afraid that AI will replace them, the other is about to rage quit because AI is damaging to their mental health, but being forced on them by management which is as clueless that those of the insurance claims adjusters.

by dash2 15d ago

piltdownman 15d ago

The difference being that the role of Engineer wasn't conceived as a layer of friction between consumers and their statutory rights to the point where a U.S. Senate subcommittee probe (Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management) and state-level legal crackdowns were necessary to try and address what constituted systematic fraud by property/casualty insurance corporations. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-chairs-hearing-that-exposes-insurance-fraud-by-major-corporations/ https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-chairs-hearing-that-exp... The California Department of Insurance characterized State Farm's tactics as "burying survivors in red tape at the worst moments of their lives" https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2026/release019-2026.cfm https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2... Indeed, some of the core violations could be simply mandated as part of the inviolable system guardrails of an LLM - e.g. failed to begin investigating claims within 15 days, failed to accept or deny claims within 40 days, and failed to pay accepted claims or provide written notice of the need for additional time within 30 days, as required by law. And at the end of the day, whatever weighting issues an LLM for Insurance Claim Adjustment has, it certainly won't steal the money and run off to a Casino with it https://www.nicb.org/news/regional-news/broward-insurance-adjuster-stole-600k-hurricane-ian-victims-authorities-say https://www.nicb.org/news/regional-news/broward-insurance-ad...

nvahalik 15d ago

AI isn’t replacing adjusters. Anecdotally, many of them are aging out and the demands of adjusters are increasing while the pay hasn’t necessarily gone up. While technically you don’t have to know the ins and outs of construction, it helps a lot and there are just not a lot of people who have that knowledge. And if they do, they often go into construction themselves or sell roofs. Both of which can be far more lucrative. On top of that, claims software has a lot of automation but very little real AI surface area. A lot of the things AI is good at (text generation) must have certain verbiage or use legally approved templates. Granted, this may not be the case for all verticals, but this is just my observation from 20 years. (Mostly in smaller IA firms and state-based institutions). Also, my wife has pointed out that there haven’t been any major cats in the last few years. Katrina kept people working for years. A lack of big storms has also contributed to this.

dspillett 15d ago
> AI isn’t replacing adjusters. > Anecdotally, many of them are aging out Ageing and out and neither being replaced directly or reduce numbers coming in at the bottom/mid as others move up, is still a drop in people. If part of the reason there is less need to bring people in lower down is that a few are being expected to do the work of a few more due to automation via AI, then that is AI replacing them, just not quite as directly as “we need less people as AI makes each more efficient so there are redundancies”.
- nvahalik 15d ago
  But that's the thing—there isn't any real automation for this. An adjuster has to physically go out to someone's property. They have to take pictures. They have to inspect things. They have to coordinate with 3rd parties if necessary (like engineers). There isn't a whole lot of room for automation in much of this. Underwriting on the other hand, that is a different story.
dash2 15d ago
20% aged out in one year?

mrweasel 15d ago

There are probably two camps in IT (in terms of hating AI). One is afraid that AI will replace them, the other is about to rage quit because AI is damaging to their mental health, but being forced on them by management which is as clueless that those of the insurance claims adjusters.