The picture is cautious but active. Across the wider labour market, businesses have taken a careful approach to headcount through a subdued economic year, with clear demand hotspots for specialist skills in AI, data, and related fields Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. Insurance sits inside that pattern: firms are not hiring in bulk, they are hiring for capability.
Where growth is happening, it favours professional and technical work. The largest volume increase in vacancies from August to October 2025 came in the professional, scientific, and technical activities sector, up by 5,000 the ONS vacancies bulletin for November 2025. Claims teams are a good example of this shift, moving from high-volume processing towards higher-judgement roles.
At the same time, the entry-level route into the sector is tightening. Adzuna has recorded a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, leaving graduates with the toughest market since 2018 techUK's analysis of entry-level and graduate jobs. When routine triage moves to software, the junior desk that once trained new starters gets smaller.
AI agents are strong at the front of the claims journey: logging a first notice of loss, checking a policy, sorting simple cases, and routing everything else. That is triage. As agents absorb it, the human roles that remain are the ones needing judgement, investigation, and care. Think complex loss adjusting, fraud analysis, subrogation, and the difficult conversations that follow a serious claim.
The demand signal behind this is sharp. Demand for AI skills rose nearly 200% in a single year, and London alone accounts for 80% of AI-related job postings figures from Accenture reported by The Register. Insurers competing for people who can build, supervise, and audit these systems are competing against every other sector at once.
There is a training gap to watch, too. UK tech graduate jobs fell by 46% in a year, with a further 53% drop projected Institute of Student Employers data reported by The Register. If firms automate the junior work without replacing the learning that came with it, they risk thinning the pipeline that produces senior claims talent five years out. Apprenticeships offer one answer here, having climbed from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025.
Start by mapping the work, not the job title. When AI agents take triage, a claims handler role becomes a mix of investigation, exception handling, and customer empathy. Write the vacancy around those skills so you attract people who can reason through a messy case, not just clear a queue.
Second, hire for AI supervision. Someone has to check what the agent decides, spot edge cases, and step in when a claim needs a human. These are among the specialist skills driving the market into 2026 the tech recruitment outlook cited by Computer Weekly, and they blend domain knowledge with comfort around data. IT business analysts and systems designers, some 193,000 workers, already sit in critical demand the GOV.UK Occupations in Demand 2025 data, so expect competition for anyone who bridges insurance and technology.
Third, build your own pipeline. With entry-level postings down 30% techUK's entry-level jobs analysis, the firms that invest in apprenticeships and structured training will own the senior talent of the next decade. Move quickly, keep the process short, and be clear about the judgement and progression the role offers. Good people in a tight market do not wait around.
This is where we come in. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find the people who can do the upstream work, from complex loss adjusters to AI-literate claims analysts, and we manage the process end to end. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. Tell us the role, and we will start building your shortlist today.
