The Silent Liability: How Burnout is Costing Carriers Millions

Step into any claims office and you’ll see employees carrying more than caseloads; they’re carrying exhaustion. In insurance, where precision and empathy are the twin engines of effective claims handling, burnout isn’t just a workforce issue. It’s a business risk hiding in plain sight.

We often measure claims outcomes by customer satisfaction scores or cycle times. But if you step back and ask what truly drives those metrics, the answer is clear: the individual adjuster.

When these professionals are running on fumes, the impact extends far beyond a single claim. It threatens retention, erodes institutional knowledge, undermines compliance and ultimately cuts into a carrier’s bottom line.

Burnout: Measuring the Business Cost

Too often, discussions of employee wellbeing get confined to HR initiatives. Annual surveys, wellness webinars or once-a-year engagement campaigns are the norm. But burnout is not a soft topic. It’s measurable, and the data is alarming.

According to the CUNY School of Public Health, burnout costs employers between $4,000 and $21,000 per employee per year in lost productivity as well as turnover. For a company with just 1,000 employees, that translates to $5 million annually. Adjusting for the unique skill set and long ramp-up time in claims, those numbers likely understate the impact on insurance carriers.

Related: Fixing the Claims Experience Where It Matters Most: In the Mess

The risk doesn’t end there. A recent survey by Wellhub found that 83% of employees would consider leaving their employer if they felt well-being support was inadequate. Pair that with Talker Research’s 2025 report, which revealed 73% of Gen Z and 70% of Millennials are considering job changes due to burnout.

The message is sparkling clear. Burnout is not just draining today’s workforce; it’s threatening the future pipeline of adjusters.

Talent Pipeline at Risk

Claims handling has always been an apprenticeship profession. Knowledge is built file by file, conversation by conversation, over years of experience. When a veteran adjuster retires or leaves the industry, their expertise doesn’t sit on a server or in a training manual ready for the new replacement adjuster to download. Instead, it walks right out the door.

That makes the generational data particularly eye-opening. If younger adjusters exit before they gain depth, the industry faces a vacuum. Carriers will lose not only seasoned veterans but also the very people who should be developing into tomorrow’s experts.

Related: Navigating Talent Shortages and Making Claims Cool

One adjuster, new to the role but already seasoned, put it simply when that person told me: “I’ve been with my company three years, and we lose an adjuster every six months. We’re a small team and last year I was thrown into high-level files with zero training.”

Being thrown into the deep end is unfortunately something many of us have experienced. This isn’t sustainable. It’s a compounding problem where burnout drives turnover, turnover drives workload spikes and workload spikes accelerate burnout in those who remain.

The Hidden Costs

When an adjuster burns out, it shows up in places executives measure, but not always where they connect the dots.

• Customer Outcomes: Burnt-out adjusters have less capacity for empathy and patience; two qualities directly tied to J.D. Power’s declining customer satisfaction scores in claims.
• Compliance & Litigation: Overwhelmed adjusters make more documentation and reserve errors. In claims, that’s not just a mistake, it’s potential bad faith or regulatory scrutiny.
• Engagement: Burnout doesn’t always lead to immediate resignation. Sometimes it shows up as “quiet quitting” or disengagement that drags down team productivity long before turnover hits.

In other words, burnout is not a hidden personal issue. It’s a financial and legal liability.

The Surgeon Analogy

Consider a surgeon who walks into the operating room after weeks of back-to-back shifts with no sleep. Would you want that person holding the scalpel over you? Probably not. Precision, judgment and emotional steadiness are too important to leave to chance.

Now apply that lens to claims. Every decision, whether to deny, to pay, or to negotiate, carries weight for policyholders, attorneys, and carriers. Precision and empathy are non-negotiable. Yet too often, adjusters are expected to perform high stakes work under chronic fatigue, limited training, and relentless pressure.

Like medicine, insurance is an industry where errors can carry immense consequences.

Voices in the Field

The statistics are revealing, but the look at the human side is even more so. Here’s what I’ve heard recently from professionals across the industry:

A veteran adjuster shared, “I’d love professional development opportunities and increased training, but my company won’t allow me to go to the various insurance conferences and is cutting back on costs.”

Consequently, a claims manager who sees the big picture recently stressed to me that leaders need to support and advocate for their staff. Managers work for the adjusters, not the other way around. It’s the manager’s job to set adjusters up for success and not be afraid to battle up the line for workloads, training and resources.

These aren’t isolated gripes. They’re symptoms of a system that treats burnout as an individual weakness rather than an organizational risk.

“Wellness Theater” Is Not Enough

Many carriers have wellness programs such as yoga classes, apps or annual workshops. These can be helpful, but they fall short if they’re treated as silver bullets. Burnout is not solved by once-a-year initiatives. It requires ongoing attention, embedded into management practices and organizational design.

This means setting realistic workloads—caseload expectations based on complexity, not just volume. It also means protecting time for development, giving adjusters the space to attend conferences, take courses or mentor. Managerial advocacy is equally critical, with leaders acting as buffers against noise rather than mere enforcers of targets. Continuous listening matters too; catching warning signs before exit interviews or annual surveys reveal that people are drowning.

Carriers should approach burnout prevention the same way they approach loss control: ongoing, proactive and embedded in the culture.

Why This Matters Now

The insurance industry is at a crossroads. The combination of seasoned professionals retiring, younger adjusters questioning career longevity and rising complexity in claims means the margin for error is shrinking.

We cannot afford to let burnout silently dictate outcomes. Just as we wouldn’t send a surgeon into the operating room exhausted and undertrained, we shouldn’t send adjusters into complex files without the resources to succeed.

The data tells us burnout is expensive. The voices tell us it’s unsustainable. The challenge (and opportunity) for carriers is to move beyond wellness check-the-boxes and treat burnout as the strategic, ongoing business initiative it is.

Bottom Line

Burnout in claims isn’t about being tired, it’s about losing expertise, breaking compliance, frustrating customers and bleeding millions in hidden costs. Carriers that fix this don’t just help employees; they win on talent, outcomes, and trust.

So ask yourself: How much longer can the industry look the other way? Because if you’d never agree to a surgeon running on no sleep and effectively underqualified in that moment, you shouldn’t accept it from the professionals handling your claims either.

Casaleggio is the author of Claims Burnout: Recharge Strategies for Adjusters & Attorneys. He is also a regional director at The Vertex Companies.