In lots 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 applications. I’ve notably requested concerning the role-playing workout routines designed to simulate real-world declare disputes. These workout routines, meant to arrange 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 relatively than professionals to be handled courteously and respect.
That will sound like innocent “toughening up,” however it’s not. It’s a cultural cue. And it could possibly have lasting penalties for the way adjusters method actual folks in actual claims.
The Dangerous: Reinforcing Adversarial Bias and Institutionalized Mistrust
When role-playing persistently depicts public adjusters and roofers as “the enemy,” it does greater than train negotiation ways. One of these role-playing circumstances insurance coverage firm adjusters’ worldview. As an alternative of approaching each declare as a seek for the reality and a good end 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 imagined 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 Surroundings itself stresses, that declare representatives ought to deal with all events, together with public adjusters, with skilled courtesy, respect, and evenhanded communication:
In fact, declare representatives take care of folks aside from the insureds and claimants. Attorneys might act adversarial, however they needn’t be thought to be enemies. The foundations {of professional} courtesy all the time 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 each one public adjusters are adversaries will solely make the declare course of harder than it want be.
Contractors and distributors ought to be handled pretty and respectfully. The declare consultant will most likely take care of contractors and distributors on greater than only one declare. The courteous dealing with of a declare will pave the way in which 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 Surroundings (1993)are timeless and maybe even extra related at the moment. 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 an alternative train adjusters to ridicule or mistrust these on the opposite facet, they erode not solely public confidence but additionally the ethical basis of the business itself.
Psychologically, as soon as adjusters are repeatedly educated to count on deceit, they start to see it in every single place. 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 legit advocates for policyholders, who play a vital position in balancing the asymmetry of data and assets, are dismissed and even punished via 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 arduous 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 stated—and to be truthful and balanced—role-playing itself will not 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 generally is a highly effective coaching device to arrange firm adjusters for the fact that some actors within the discipline, on all sides, might 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 is whether or not the train is designed to construct professionalism or to reinforce prejudice. Moral role-playing would:
- Current a number of eventualitiestogether with cooperative, moral, and unethical public adjusters or roofers.
- Concentrate on skilled responsenot character judgment. For instance, a query may very well be posed about “How do you retain the dialogue fact-based, document-driven, and courteous?”
- Emphasize de-escalation and problem-solvingnot “successful” the argument.
- Anchor the train in actual coverage language and claims requirementsdisplaying that truthful outcomes come from process and precept, not persona.
In that mild, property insurance coverage adjusters be taught emotional management, empathy, and ability relatively than cynicism and a poor angle. That form of coaching aligns completely with what Markham, Quinley, and Thompson wrote in The Claims Surroundings: skilled courtesy ought to by no means be deserted, even when coping with attorneys, public adjusters, contractors, or perceived adversaries.
The Ethical Check of a Claims Tradition
The deeper implication is that these role-playing classes reveal an organization’s claims tradition. If the tone is mocking or derisive, it tells you the whole lot about how the group really sees the claims operate as a cost-containment weapon relatively than a promise-fulfillment mechanism.
However when role-playing is used to develop maturity, professionalism, and ability below strain, it displays a corporation that also understands that the guts of insurance coverage is belief.
In brief, badvert coaching and improper position enjoying train adjusters who to mistrust. Good role-playing teaches adjusters methods 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 Trade Forgotten the Which means of Its Personal Insurance policiesand a assessment of numerous my speeches throughout 2025. Boggs prompt that many within the insurance coverage business must double down on coaching as a result of it’s crucial for the insurance coverage product to operate correctly. I agree.
On the similar time, in reflection, I’ll have been too harsh in my criticism of the role-playing facets present in coaching. Property insurance coverage adjusters and all of us must learn to take care of all varieties of folks. As I said on this submit, it could be naive to suppose that everyone goes to play by the foundations of excellent religion or act professionally.
Thought for the Day
“Prejudice, not reality, is the mom of ignorance.”
—William Hazlitt
