Verisk says AI can offset rising claims complexity and staffing gaps

The adjuster’s job is getting harder just as the bench is thinning, and Verisk is framing AI as the practical answer to that squeeze. In its May 18 article, “The New Adjuster Reality: Rising Complexity, Shrinking Capacity, and the Need for AI Assistance,” the company said liability claims leaders are being squeezed by rising claim severity and shrinking claims capacity at the same time.

Verisk’s point is not that software should replace experienced adjusters. It argues for a support layer that helps seasoned claims professionals work with better information, less manual searching and more consistent decisions in high-stakes files. That matters in a part of the insurance operation where mistakes are expensive and where severity, litigation and specialization are all increasing pressure on the people making the calls.

The workforce backdrop is stark. Verisk said that in 2023 it was projected that nearly 400,000 insurance professionals would retire by the end of 2026, a demographic cliff that threatens to drain hard-won expertise from claims teams. The company also pointed to social inflation and litigation pressure as forces raising the cost of getting claims decisions wrong, making the need for judgment support more urgent.

That is where Verisk sees AI fitting in. The company said these tools can reinforce adjuster judgment, reduce variability in high-stakes outcomes and scale expertise without adding to operational burden. In practice, that means helping with triage, standardizing decisions and absorbing the repetitive work that can bog down staff before they ever get to the parts of the file that require real human evaluation.

Verisk made a similar case in a separate liability-claims article, where it said claimant behavior, litigation and legal complexity are making claims more contentious. There, too, the company argued that AI-powered claims review tools can cut manual tasks so adjusters can spend more time on higher-value decision-making and customer engagement.

The same message showed up in Verisk’s April 14 claims trends release, which said claims declined in 2025 even as the underlying risks became more complex and concentrated, producing more severe and challenging losses. EY’s 2025 Global Insurance Outlook echoed that broader shift, pointing to rapid technology change in insurance, including generative AI and the fast rise of agentic AI.

Taken together, the signals are clear: claims software is no longer just digitizing the old workflow. It is being asked to help insurers do more with fewer experienced hands, without degrading the quality of the claim itself.