The wider UK market is cautious but far from frozen. The Low Pay Commission describes the labour market as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment but only slight increases in redundancies and vacancies sitting below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. That backdrop rewards employers who hire deliberately rather than in volume.
Where demand does exist, it clusters around specialist skills. Businesses took a cautious approach through 2025, but there were clear demand hotspots for AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook. Official figures echo this: 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. Insurance sits squarely inside that professional and technical space, which is exactly where AI-adjacent roles are growing.
The headline shift is the surge in AI demand. Demand for AI skills rose nearly 200% in a year, with London accounting for 80% of AI-related job postings and nearly two-thirds of all UK technology vacancies figures from Accenture reported by The Register. For claims teams, that means competing for people who understand how models score, triage and flag claims, not just how to process them.
The way firms build these skills is changing too. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025, a signal that employers are growing talent internally rather than waiting for the perfect finished hire. At the same time, the traditional entry route is tightening: Adzuna has recorded a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, leaving graduates facing the toughest market since 2018 techUK's analysis of entry-level jobs. In tech specifically, graduate roles fell by 46% in a single year Institute of Student Employers data via The Register. Blended claims-plus-AI roles are quietly filling the gap that pure entry-level jobs once occupied.
Adjacent skills matter as well. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, roughly 193,000 workers, are among the occupations in critical demand in 2025 the GOV.UK Occupations in Demand release. Those are the people who help claims functions turn AI ambitions into working systems.
Start by writing for the blend, not the buzzword. Describe the claims judgement you need first, then the AI fluency that sits alongside it: reading a model's output, questioning a confidence score, escalating an unusual claim. You are hiring someone who can tell when the machine is wrong, which is a human skill before it is a technical one.
Second, build as well as buy. With apprenticeships now a fifth of AI hires the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025, upskilling experienced claims handlers is often faster than chasing scarce specialists. A strong claims professional who learns to work with AI tends to outperform a technologist who has never handled a distressed customer.
Third, move quickly and fairly. In a 'low hire' market the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report, the best blended candidates are considered carefully and rarely stay available long. A clear brief, a short and consistent interview process and prompt feedback protect both the hire and the candidate experience. Widen your net too: with entry-level routes narrowing techUK's analysis of entry-level jobs, look beyond the usual talent pools to career changers and people returning to work.
We built Reed.ai to make deliberate hiring feel fast. We search 15 million candidates to find the right blend of claims experience and AI fluency, rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds and manage the process end to end, from first contact to a booked interview. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell us what your blended claims role looks like and we'll surface people who match today.
