AI Feelings - Insurance Journal

The insurance industry has discovered a new class of risk and, for once, it is sitting inside the building. Glassdoor's Employee Confidence Index — the mood ring with a spreadsheet attached — finds insurance workers increasingly negative about AI job displacement, with sector employment down 21% year-over-year and entry-level adjuster positions down 50%. The trade press has titled this 'AI Feelings', which is generous; what it actually documents is the sound of an intake desk being automated and then asked for its opinion. The index is compiled from what employees write about their own employers, which is the closest thing the modern labour market has to a hazard warning, assuming anyone reads it before the reorganisation memo goes out.

The standout figure is 98%. Claims adjusters — the people insurers spent years telling investors could be replaced by a workflow — are critical of AI in 98% of their Glassdoor reviews. Ninety-eight per cent. The remaining two per cent are presumably bots, or people one week from retirement with a final performance review to protect. The marketing decks promised this technology would 'augment' the workforce, which was true in the sense that 'augment' was never defined, and a 50% cut to entry-level adjuster roles is one definition of it.

Note where the damage lands. It is not the senior underwriter with twenty years of relationships who is vanishing; it's the entry-level rung, the one you used to grab on the way up, now sawn off at 50%. An industry that sells itself on prudent long-term thinking has spent a decade quietly removing the bottom of its own career ladder and is now startled to find the ladder short. Expect a listening tour, a rebranded chatbot, and a wellness webinar on managing change; the 21% have already managed it, by leaving. The 98% is not a comms problem for a nicer intranet. It is a loss run, and the loss is the workforce.