In a lot of my speeches this yr, I’ve invited viewers participation and heard from many former insurance coverage firm adjusters and unbiased adjusters about their coaching packages. I’ve significantly requested in regards to the role-playing workout routines designed to simulate real-world declare disputes. These workout routines, meant to organize property insurance coverage adjusters for the pressures of negotiation, too typically depict public adjusters and roofers as grasping, overbearing, and untrustworthy. Public adjusters, roofers, and mitigation contractors are mocked, caricatured, and portrayed as enemies to be outsmarted somewhat than professionals to be handled with politeness and respect.
That will sound like innocent “toughening up,” but it surely’s not. It’s a cultural cue. And it may have lasting penalties for the way adjusters strategy actual individuals in actual claims.
The Dangerous: Reinforcing Adversarial Bias and Institutionalized Mistrust
When role-playing constantly depicts public adjusters and roofers as “the enemy,” it does greater than educate negotiation ways. One of these role-playing situations insurance coverage firm adjusters’ worldview. As an alternative of approaching each declare as a seek for the reality and a good final result, the adjuster learns to see the opposite facet as manipulative and dishonest from the beginning.
This mindset can corrode the precept and responsibility of good religion claims dealing with. Claims professionals are purported to act as fiduciaries of equity, balancing the insurer’s responsibility to its policyholders with the contractual rights of the corporate. However bias-based coaching replaces professionalism with tribalism. It undermines what The Claims Setting itself stresses, that declare representatives ought to deal with all events, together with public adjusters, with skilled courtesy, respect, and evenhanded communication:
After all, declare representatives cope with individuals aside from the insureds and claimants. Attorneys could act adversarial, however they needn’t be thought to be enemies. The foundations {of professional} courtesy at all times apply to a declare consultant’s communications with authorized counsel.
Public adjusters are representatives of the insureds. The identical guidelines regarding courtesy to the insured apply in coping with public adjusters. The declare consultant who assumes that every one public adjusters are adversaries will solely make the declare course of tougher than it want be.
Contractors and distributors must be handled pretty and respectfully. The declare consultant will most likely cope with contractors and distributors on greater than only one declare. The courteous dealing with of a declare will pave the best way for cooperation and good relations in lots of future claims.
These phrases, written by James J. Markham, Kevin M. Quinley, and Layton S. Thompson in The Claims Setting (1993), are timeless and even perhaps extra related at this time. They remind us that courtesy and equity aren’t simply gentle expertise. As an alternative, they’re moral obligations rooted in declare professionalism. When insurers ignore that, and as a substitute educate adjusters to ridicule or mistrust these on the opposite facet, they erode not solely public confidence but in addition the ethical basis of the trade itself.
Psychologically, as soon as adjusters are repeatedly educated to anticipate deceit, they start to see it in all places. This results in affirmation bias, the place each discrepancy turns into proof of dishonesty, and each disagreement turns into “proof” of greed. The result’s that reliable advocates for policyholders, who play a necessary position in balancing the asymmetry of data and sources, are dismissed and even punished by means of lowballing, delay ways, or defensive posturing.
This coaching additionally exposes insurers to regulatory and authorized threat. Company tradition is commonly mirrored in inside communications and coaching supplies. These inside communications reveal the insurance coverage firm’s true intent. If these communications present that firm adjusters have been being educated to deal with public adjusters as liars and roofers as opportunists, it turns into exhausting to argue that the corporate fostered a good-faith claims atmosphere.
I’ve beforehand mentioned this in Claims Adjusters Are Brainwashed: Public Adjusters Are To not Be Trusted, and Insurance coverage Firm Adjuster Coaching Scripts and Position Enjoying.
The Potential Good: Managed, Contextual Position-Enjoying
That mentioned—and to be honest and balanced—role-playing itself shouldn’t be the issue. As an alternative, it’s the way it’s framed and what classes are drawn from the role-playing.
Used correctly, role-playing is usually a highly effective coaching software to organize firm adjusters for the truth that some actors within the area, on all sides, could behave badly. There are dishonest contractors, unscrupulous public adjusters, and unprofessional attorneys, simply as there are unethical firm adjusters. Pretending in any other case is naïve.
The secret’s whether or not the train is designed to construct professionalism or to reinforce prejudice. Moral role-playing would:
- Current a number of situations, together with cooperative, moral, and unethical public adjusters or roofers.
- Deal with skilled response, not character judgment. For instance, a query might be posed about “How do you retain the dialogue fact-based, document-driven, and courteous?”
- Emphasize de-escalation and problem-solving, not “profitable” the argument.
- Anchor the train in actual coverage language and claims requirements, exhibiting that honest outcomes come from process and precept, not persona.
In that mild, property insurance coverage adjusters be taught emotional management, empathy, and talent somewhat than cynicism and a poor angle. That type of coaching aligns completely with what Markham, Quinley, and Thompson wrote in The Claims Setting: skilled courtesy ought to by no means be deserted, even when coping with attorneys, public adjusters, contractors, or perceived adversaries.
The Ethical Take a look at of a Claims Tradition
The deeper implication is that these role-playing periods reveal an organization’s claims tradition. If the tone is mocking or derisive, it tells you all the pieces about how the group actually sees the claims operate as a cost-containment weapon somewhat than a promise-fulfillment mechanism.
However when role-playing is used to develop maturity, professionalism, and talent below stress, it displays a company that also understands that the guts of insurance coverage is belief.
In brief, badvert coaching and improper position taking part in educate adjusters who to mistrust. Good role-playing teaches adjusters find out how to keep reliable even when others aren’t.
At present’s weblog originated from my current podcast interview with insurance coverage educator Christopher Boggs, famous in Has the Insurance coverage Business Forgotten the That means of Its Personal Insurance policies, and a evaluation of various my speeches throughout 2025. Boggs recommended that many within the insurance coverage trade have to double down on coaching as a result of it’s crucial for the insurance coverage product to operate correctly. I agree.
On the identical time, in reflection, I could have been too harsh in my criticism of the role-playing features present in coaching. Property insurance coverage adjusters and all of us have to discover ways to cope with all sorts of individuals. As I acknowledged on this submit, it could be naive to assume that everyone goes to play by the principles of excellent religion or act professionally.
Thought for the Day
“Prejudice, not reality, is the mom of ignorance.”
—William Hazlitt
