The backdrop is cautious. The Low Pay Commission describes today's labour market as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment but only slight increases in redundancies, and vacancies now sitting below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. That means employers are moving carefully, and the roles they do open tend to be the ones that carry real weight.
There are still pockets of demand. The ONS reports that the largest volume increase in vacancies recently came in the professional, scientific and technical activities sector, which rose by 5,000 in the three months to October 2025 the ONS Vacancies and jobs bulletin. Insurance sits inside this professional services space, and the pattern is familiar: fewer roles overall, but sharper competition for specialists.
For an ongoing read on how hiring activity, salaries and candidate availability are shifting month to month, the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs is a useful barometer the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs. In a slow market, the value of a single strong hire goes up, not down.
Large loss claims cover the high-value, complex end of the book: major property damage, business interruption, complex liability, catastrophe and disputed claims that can run into significant sums. The people who handle them well are rare because the work blends technical detail with commercial judgement and calm under pressure.
Three dynamics make these roles hard to fill. First, experience takes years to build, and it cannot be shortcut. A large loss adjuster or complex claims handler learns through exposure to real files, not classroom theory. Second, the wider market is squeezing the entry-level pipeline that feeds senior roles later. A snapshot of UK entry-level hiring shows how sharply junior recruitment has pulled back in technical fields, with engineering entry-level hiring at -19% against -10% for senior roles, a nine-percentage-point gap a GOV.UK snapshot of entry-level hiring. Thinner junior intakes today mean fewer experienced specialists tomorrow.
Third, the skills that separate a good large loss handler from a great one are exactly the ones that resist automation: negotiation, indemnity decisions, reserving judgement and the ability to manage policyholders, brokers, loss adjusters and lawyers through a stressful process. That's why insurers back judgement over box-ticking when they hire at this level.
Start with the outcomes, not the CV. Define what a good decision looks like on a large loss file: sound indemnity calls, accurate reserving, tight cost control and policyholders who feel fairly treated. Then design your assessment around those outcomes. A well-built case study, drawn from a real (anonymised) claim, tells you far more than a list of past job titles.
One more point: don't neglect the pipeline. With junior technical hiring falling across sectors as the entry-level snapshot shows, the insurers who keep developing their own talent will have the large loss specialists others cannot find in a few years' time.
This is where we come in. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the judgement and complex-claims experience these roles demand, and we rank a shortlist in seconds so you can focus on the people worth meeting. We manage the process end to end, from first contact through to interview and offer. 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. If you're hiring for large loss claims, tell us what a great decision looks like on your files and we'll start the search today.
