Alongside increased technical requirements, insurance claims assessors face growing emotional demands as they regularly support people through major life challenges. Building a sustainable claims profession requires providing the necessary mental health and wellbeing support to protect the people who deliver this essential service.
Insurance claims assessors occupy a unique position. On any given day, they may speak with someone facing a terminal illness, support a family following the death of a loved one, assess the impact of a disabling injury, or help a customer struggling with severe anxiety, depression, or financial hardship.
It is important work. Meaningful work. Work that changes lives. Yet there is growing recognition that this work comes at a cost.
The insurance industry plays a critical role in helping individuals and families navigate some of life's most challenging moments. Through financial protection, compassionate support, and timely claims decisions, insurers help people maintain dignity, security, independence, and hope during periods of illness, disability, trauma, and loss.
As our understanding of the psychological demands of claims work continues to evolve, there is increasing recognition that sustaining this essential service requires more than technical excellence alone. It requires ongoing investment in the people who deliver it.
Claims assessors need support managing the job's many mental health challenges. RGA is here to help. Scroll to the end of this article to explore our latest educational and training resources.
Much has been written about burnout among healthcare professionals, first responders, and social workers. Far less attention has been paid to insurance claims assessors, despite many of the same risk factors.
Claims assessors are regularly exposed to some of the most difficult and confronting aspects of the human experience. Alongside serious illness, disability, and financial hardship, they may encounter claims arising from homicide, suicide, domestic and family violence, childhood abuse, catastrophic injury, workplace trauma, criminal proceedings, and profound psychological distress.
Assessors support individuals during moments of acute emotional crisis, and many routinely speak with customers experiencing severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, schizophrenia, or suicidal ideation.
At the same time, assessors must remain calm, compassionate, objective, and professionally accountable. They must balance empathy with policy obligations, navigate highly sensitive situations, and often communicate decisions that carry significant consequences for customers and their families. The emotional weight of this responsibility should not be underestimated.
Research into compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, and vicarious trauma demonstrates that repeatedly engaging with the suffering and traumatic experiences of others can have genuine psychological impacts.1,2 Many assessors spend years, sometimes decades, carrying the emotional weight of other people's most difficult life experiences.
The challenge is not a single difficult claim but the gradual accumulation of emotional exposure across hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of claims over the course of a career.
The environment in which claims assessors operate has become increasingly complex. Today's assessors must navigate evolving customer expectations, rising mental health claim incidence, greater regulatory scrutiny, increasingly sophisticated medical evidence, heightened service standards, and growing public awareness of insurer obligations. Assessors are expected to act as technical experts, investigators, communicators, educators, problem-solvers, and customer advocates.
Many claims roles now require a broader and more demanding skill set than was needed even a decade ago.
Across many markets, insurers have experienced significant growth in mental health claims. In Australia, for example, mental health is now the leading cause of Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) claims and accounts for approximately one-third of all TPD claims paid. Mental ill-health also contributes to around one in five income protection claims. Research commissioned by the Council of Australian Life Insurers and undertaken by KPMG found a 732% increase in mental health-related permanent disability claims among people in their 30s over the past decade.3,4
Mental health claims often involve complexities that extend beyond medical evidence alone. Assessors may be required to navigate treatment engagement, recovery uncertainty, workplace factors, psychosocial influences, vocational capacity, functional impairment, and long-term rehabilitation. These claims often require significant emotional investment, nuanced communication, and ongoing relationship management.
At the same time, insurers globally have experienced increased regulatory oversight, stronger consumer protections, enforceable industry codes, tighter service expectations, and heightened scrutiny of claims decisions. While these developments have delivered important benefits for customers, they also have increased pressure on claims teams tasked with balancing empathy, commercial responsibility, technical accuracy, compliance obligations, and customer experience.
In short, today's claims assessor is being asked to do more than ever before.
It is important to note that, along with its challenges, claims assessment offers many advantages as a profession and an opportunity to enjoy a long and fulfilling career. For example:
Most importantly, it provides something many careers cannot: the opportunity to make a genuine difference in other people’s lives during their most difficult moments.
If claims work continues to become more emotionally demanding, how do insurers attract, develop, and retain talented claims assessors? Many organizations report challenges recruiting experienced assessors. Others struggle with retention as skilled employees pursue roles with lower emotional demands.
Historically, resilience initiatives often have focused on individual coping strategies. These remain important. Healthy boundaries, recovery practices, supportive relationships, physical wellbeing, reflective processing, and access to professional support all play valuable roles.
However, increasing evidence suggests that wellbeing cannot be treated solely as an individual responsibility. The World Health Organization defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, highlighting the importance of organizational factors alongside individual ones.5
If we want sustainable claims careers, organizations must also examine:
Just as insurers invest heavily in risk management frameworks to protect customers, the same strategic thinking can be applied to workforce sustainability. The goal should be to ensure assessors have the skills, support, resources, and leadership necessary to manage emotional impact sustainably over the course of a long and rewarding career.
Creating a sustainable claims profession requires action from everyone.
For individual assessors, it means recognizing that being affected by difficult claims is normal. It means developing self-awareness, building support networks, setting boundaries, and seeking help early when needed.
For leaders, it means creating environments in which wellbeing conversations are normalized, rather than stigmatized.
For employers, it means acknowledging that psychological demands are a legitimate occupational consideration, not simply a personal issue.
And for the industry as a whole, it means recognizing that the future health of claims operations depends on the health of the people delivering them.
At RGA, we believe supporting claims assessors is an essential part of supporting customers and have developed several resources designed to help build capability, resilience, and sustainability within claims teams.
Our Latest Pathfinder Module: Sustaining Performance in Claims (client only) – An in-depth look at the emotional realities of claims work, including compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, moral distress, burnout awareness, practical wellbeing strategies, and the development of personalized wellbeing plans.
Webinar: Tough Customer Conversations (client only) – A popular webinar exploring practical techniques for managing emotionally charged interactions, reducing conflict, and turning challenging conversations into opportunities for constructive progress.
Pathfinder Module: Handling Difficult Conversations (client only) – A practical learning resource focused on communication strategies, de-escalation techniques, and maintaining professionalism during challenging customer interactions.
Mental Health Toolkit (client only) and Resource Hub – A collection of articles, tools, and practical resources designed to support claims assessors navigating increasing mental health claim complexity.
Podcast: Mental Health Claims: Understanding the Role of Resilience – A discussion exploring the relationship between mental health claims, recovery, and resilience and the important role insurers can play in supporting positive outcomes.
