Nine Claims Trends to Watch Through The Rest of 2026

Catastrophe, resilience, automation, digital transformation, personalization of the claims experience, talent strategies, operational flexibility—there are a mouthful of trends to talk about in the still-young year.

A new report from Crawford & Company forecasts trends that will be reshaping the insurance claims industry the rest of 2026. The Crawford report offers nine predictions for what lies ahead in claims.

It’s one of the few reports out lately that doesn’t have a heightened focus on the impact of artificial intelligence as its main theme. However, the increasing impact of AI on claims is the center of one of the report’s predictions.

“As AI drives more claims automation, we will see more straight-through processing of low complexity claims in 2026,” writes report co-author Joel Raedeke, senior vice president, U.S. technology for Crawford.

Increasingly sophisticated AI technology makes it likely that some of these simpler claims “will pass through all decision gates to auto-approval” without any human adjuster involvement. The prediction also foresees adjuster training shifting to a need for “AI literacy, interpretability and judgment in direct use of AI.”

According to a recent report from Sedgwick, using AI to handle low-severity claims has led to 80% faster processing times for some carriers. However, few carriers use AI at more than a small scale— and the vast majority of adjusters say need AI needs human oversight, according to that report.

Some veteran adjusters have argued that taking the human element entirely out adjusting, no matter how simple a claim, is not going to be without its drawbacks.

“The bot may think it’s giving more personalized service, but the bot that you’re talking to doesn’t have any empathy and it sometimes doesn’t understand what you’re trying to tell it,” said Gregg Golson, chief strategist for Up2Now LLC, a consulting firm. “When they’re handling these things, they can say ‘Oh, you had fence blown down, that’s 100 linear feet of fence. We’ll send you a check for $30 per linear foot; we’ll have that check in the mail to you minus the deductible.’ I understand handling claims like that, but it’s a misnomer to think that AI, while handling these claims, is not going to have problems.”

The Crawford report’s first prediction is that the industry, regulators and insurance consumers will be more proactive in response to larger and more severe natural disasters, such as the L.A. wildfires in January 2025, which drove numerous changes to California insurance regulations as carriers sought rate hikes and drew back from writing in the state.

The report authors see more support across the industry, increased efforts to educate homeowners and contractors, and more funding and funding mechanisms for resilience and preparedness. That includes endorsements for things like covering a percentage of the cost to replace a roof with a resilient shingle, loans or grants to help homeowners pay for upgrades, and private financing.

Golson also foresees trends to deal with natural catastrophe losses becoming more frequent, such as increased out of pocket costs passed on to insureds as well as “outside the box” approaches.

“I think one of the new things coming out that’s really interesting to me is there’re actually people creating parametric insurance for named storm deductibles or the (actual cash value) gaps, so people are getting a second policy based on parametric—whether it’s 1%, whether it’s the amount of wind damage, the wind mph in an area, or the size of the hit that they can prove—they automatically make a payment that would make up for the ACV gap or for the named storm,” Golson said.

The report also foresees some new approaches to coverage developing. This year, AI will impact policy pricing and claims processing “as the ability to store, compile and analyze large amounts of data drives increased customization throughout the policy lifecycle,” the report states.

Innovation and change are themes in several of the report’s predictions. In 2026, medical and indemnity cost severity will continue to rise faster than frequency continues to fall.

“Expect to see a healthy mix of captives and traditional insurance products bubble to the surface to address the resulting medical and indemnity market needs,” the report states.

The other predictions are:

“New regulation will drive the claims industry to re-examine how speed and accuracy are balanced in post-disaster recovery.”
“Data-driven transparency into adjuster performance will become table stakes for TPAs.”
“An uptick in cyber regulation will drive more activity and associated expenses from panel providers.”
“A shift in the market cycle will put pressure on captives in 2026, possibly bringing organizations back to the traditional market.”
“2026 will test the industry’s agility in preparing for what can’t yet be predicted.”

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