Loss adjusting companies in Australia must recruit newcomers to avoid a looming shortage of qualified specialists, Australasian Institute of Chartered Loss Adjusters (AICLA) President Michael Collins has warned. 

He says 83% of AICLA’s members are aged over 36, 59% are over 46 and 31% are over 56.

“Many loss adjusters enter our profession later in life, having worked in another vocation,” Mr Collins says in the institute’s latest newsletter.

He says insurers’ growing use of builders to deal with less complex repair work and the introduction of offshore claims processing has led to many adjusters “relying on catastrophes and significant weather events to survive”.

“When you combine a general decrease in traditional work with an ageing demographic wanting or perhaps required to work longer, there seems little opportunity to introduce newcomers to our profession when there may not be enough ‘fat’ to share with those already in it,” he says.

“Regardless, the time to introduce newcomers to loss adjusting is now. There is still a big chunk of the insurance industry that we are required to service, and for that we must be prepared.” 

Mr Collins says the practice of loss adjusters moving from company to company as individuals move or retire is “simply robbing Peter to pay Paul [and is] simply unsustainable”.

“With the majority of our members in the prime of their careers, heading towards or at least planning for retirement, we don’t want to be caught short by not having an adequate level of skilled adjusters to service our customers in the future,” he says.