Insurance adjuster job salaries

Best paying insurance claims jobs

Matt:

So today we're gonna have a little conversation. We're doing something a little different this time—way more informal than what we usually do. We’re going to talk about the different kinds of claims adjusters out there and what sort of claims adjuster salary or income to expect.

We will give a description of what type of insurance claims adjuster does, what their day-to-day looks like and how they stack up based on our experience (with the caveat that neither one of us have done every single one of these roles, but we've done a number of them.)

Chris:

This all started when I was Googling questions people have “What type of claim pays the most money?” was a question that popped up. And I do think it's something that we think about, especially when we're getting started.

Like, I don't just wanna make the least amount, I wanna make the most!

Most of us when we're getting started as independent adjusters, we know about property claims and that they pay really good, especially when a hurricane happens and you hit that sweet honey hole of claims.

But I don't think people have a really broad perspective of how much money can actually be made in insurance in general.

There’s just so much to the claims industry…so why not talk about how you make the most money in claims, what the different opportunities are, and each of these insurance adjuster jobs really pay?

Matt:

Let’s start with the low hanging fruit, the two basic roles that everybody kind of falls into when they first find out about becoming an independent adjuster.

So they're either CAT (Catastrophe) property or do some kind of auto claims.

I haven't personally done much auto to speak of—that’s Chris’ domain—but on the CAT property side, I did that for a long time and I did pretty well at it.

I know other people who've done different things like daily claims who’ve probably made the same amount of money or maybe more over the course of their claims career.

These claims are for things like when a drunk driver crashes into your fence, your dishwasher floods the kitchen, vandalism—the things that happen randomly, not due to something like a storm.

These can be really big, especially water damage claims, since water tends to ruin most things it touches. Cue the insurance company ATM.

So I know adjusters who’ve done really, really well on individual CAT property events, myself included, where you’re making tens of thousands of dollars in a single month or just a few weeks.

But then you might hit a big dry spell where nothing's happening, and it turns out to be a slower year for storms.

Chris:

Well, I think that we're already onto an important distinction here.

There is money to be made no matter what side of the industry you're in, whether you're in CAT or daily claims and a lot of times we think ‘big fee schedules’, and ‘big months’, but not everybody is going to hit that big month. The odds are not always in your favor.

So how do you make the most money?

It could be cat, it could be daily, it could be property, it could be auto, or it could be a combination of all of them, which is what I tend to tell people is that learning to work daily claims is like getting base hits all the time.

That's how you score runs consistently. But then swing for the fences when the hurricane comes. Go for it!

CTA Graphics

Property Claims adjuster Vs. Auto Claims adjuster salary

Which type of independent adjuster job makes more money?

Chris:

So for property—Matt’s area of expertise, not mine—from the outside looking in, if you are consistently working CAT property claims, you are going to make more money than auto. Period.

There's no question about it.

For auto, I always call it a stepping stone in the industry. You shove it in the door to get the door open. It's consistent. It's there. There's people backing into each other at Walmart all the time. There's always a car getting total lost.

Even if you're working desk claims, there's something going on with cars all the time. But with property claims…yeah, the toilet can back up from the one toy. But that's an offshoot. It's not as consistent as two cars hitting each other.

It’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges, but out of auto and property, in a vacuum, I would say hands down property's gonna make you more money. Whether it's daily Or CAT, if you're doing residential property claims, you're gonna make more money than auto.

Question is…

How fast are you gonna get to that [higher earning potential]? And how long or how much investment is it gonna take to get there?

How quickly can I start earning money in auto vs. property as a new adjuster?

Matt:

So if you were to graph out how quickly you can become successful in auto claims vs property claims, you’re going to jump up a little bit faster initially with auto, but with property, suddenly you can jump from here to way up there (*miming with hands).

Chris:

So what does this tell us?

If you can combine the two, using auto as a stepping stone, and jumping over to property when the opportunity presents itself, you’ve got this exponential growth without as many of the initial valleys.

Matt:

For sure. And while you're ramping up your auto thing, you can be preparing to make the jump to property. That gives you a lot of wiggle room to get properly trained on property and to see, what opportunities are out there.

For property claims, there's plenty of other opportunities besides waiting for a storm to come through and do some damage to someone’s house. Catastrophe claims are just the gateway, so to speak.

Matt:

Would you say most people on the auto side are like, “man, I'm really just bidding my time until I can get over to property?”

Chris:

I would say most of our auto students at iPath, come in [with property on their mind]. They found AdjusterTV and heard me talk about Auto and thought “Wait a second. I think I can do that faster. And I was never great about getting on a roof anyway.”

But I think alot of people we know in the industry, if they were in the room right now would be screaming “It’s not just auto and property!”

There’s more than just CAT, and daily claims, and auto. There’s a whole industry out there!

And while we are typically talking about these two, there’s so much even within these two—remote desk adjusting, large loss claims or total loss claims.

Total loss in auto is a huge opportunity that happens all the time, and you don't always need a ton of training to get ready for that. You just need licensing really, and a little bit of basic knowledge.

There's liability claims that the roles just go on and on and on.

With auto, I tend to tell people you can make six figures, but you’re gunna sort of cap out.

I've known a few people that have done it their first year. Like James Mathis, he's a beast. He did six figures mixing auto and CAT and property daily claims. He was really hitting it hard. That’s a dude with some serious hustle…he’s a rare exception.

Matt:

I think my third year of property claims is when I cleared a hundred thousand. (I made $114,000 in 2001, which if you adjust it for inflation, means I made the equivalent of $192,576.96 today.)

That was a lot of money back then.

I went out and bought a brand new, fully loaded, Ford F350 Diesel One Ton Truck. The sticker price was $56,000 and after some wheeling and dealing I paid $44,000 cash and walked outta there.

I don’t know that you could get that same truck for less than $100,000 today.

Anyway…so I think there has to be a little bit of serendipity to hit 6-figures your first year doing ONLY CAT property and not a mix of the two.

Your income as a catastrophe property claims adjuster is so dependent on the weather.

If there’s a big hurricane later in the season or a whole bunch of hail storms in a row and the firms are starting to run out staff adjusters or adjusters on their first call lists, this is when they start digging deeper on the roster and putting new guys in.

So making a $100,000 on your first storm(s) is a challenge, especially with a hurricane because there are so many other challenging factors besides just getting deployed:

Infrastructure being impacted by the storm
Meetings, orientations, pressure from your managers to get claims closed
The insureds calling you all the time
Having to learn on the job (because it’s your first storm)
There’s no fuel, food or water within 150 miles of your claims and your hotel is two and a half hours away

So I would have the expectation that you won’t hit $100,000 your first year doing ONLY Catastrophe property claims.

On the other hand, if you start picking up virtual adjusting stuff—the photo and scope stuff—whether it's property or auto, then Jan.1st you could be a working adjuster.

If you go all in and start picking up that kind of stuff, and start going to conferences, more opportunities start to pop up. NACA is a great conference go to because you interview with everybody and they may have something immediately available for adjusters without a lot of experience but that maybe require you to go somewhere like New Hampshire.

If you’re willing to go, and you start your year off generating income, not waiting for a big storm to hit, then absolutely you can make $100,000. Then if a hurricane or big hail storm does come, that’s just going to be the gravy on top.

Chris:

I think that's what James Mathis executed on so well his first year where he broke 6 figures. He was working steady - for 12 months he never stopped. It wasn't like he made $100,000 in 3-4 months.

We had a lady named Tiffany who graduated from our auto damage certification program and had that serendipity moment you talked about above and made will in excess of $10,000 her first month. But she also posted publicly to say “yes, this is amazing, but it’s not the standard.”

So I think both Matt and I would say, yeah you can make good money, but place your bets in a few different places. Don’t just go all in on waiting for a hurricane or hail to bring it to you.

CTA Graphics

REMOTE DESK WORK VS. FIELD ADJUSTING salary

how much do remote desk adjusters make?

Chris:

So what about some of these other areas like desk adjusting [where it tends to be based on a day rate rather than fee schedule] what do you tend to see people generating as far as income?

Matt:

Often opportunities will pop up and new adjusters will be like “oh, it's day rate? Well, I don't know if I want to take that or not.”

But the thing with handling fee schedule claims where you’re turning in an invoice and are paid for every single claim, you’re not going to make a bunch of money on each of those individually. It’s about how many you are closing total. So if you haven’t closed a bunch of claims by the end of the year, you aren’t going to make much money.

Sure, you could be making $2,200 a day on fee schedule, battling traffic, climbing roofs, etc. but you could also get rained out on a Tuesday and make $0.

If you average it out over a year, day rates can really be ‘slow and steady wins the race’ at say $450 in your pocket, seven days a week.

And in most cases, day rate roles go until you say “Uncle.” Until you just don’t want to do it any more.

So using the example of $450/day, seven days a week for say 250 days out of the year, you’d make $112,500 a year.

Chris:

This is why I think this conversation on what makes the most money is so important because it depends greatly whether you actually want to do that in your life and if so, how you want to spend your time making that money.

You’re not going to catch me on a two-story roof, and I’m probably not going to go work a cubicle…but if I get a remote desk deployment opportunity, making even $350/day, I’d do that before I went back into field adjusting or working claims in the field because there are no expenses.

So I think there's a lot of things we need to think about as new adjusters and, and even veteran adjusters.

It's not just ‘go field or go home.’

How much do remote liability and bodily injury claims adjusters make?

Chris:

On the Liability claims adjusters and the bodily injury side of things, they're sometimes making $40 to $50 an hour handling those type of claims.

When you start factoring in overtime etc. those numbers get too weird for me, but starting out getting experience in these different desk roles, there's really a whole new ceiling there. It starts looking more like property claims numbers when you're really a veteran of liability or bodily injury claims.

We don't talk about that much because that isn’t where our experience is, but we do know people who do and it’s impressive the numbers that can be brought in.

Finding remote desk work as a new adjuster

Can you get a remote liability and bodily injury claims job without experience?

Matt:

Now I know the answer to this on the property side of things, but for auto, the question that somebody might have about liability, or bodily injury claims work, is what are the chances of someone who is brand new to the industry and who maybe doesn’t want to handle claims in the field for whatever reason (travel, injury or accessibility, don’t want to live out of a hotel, etc.) finding work?

What sort of opportunities are there for new adjusters in these other fields? Do these types of roles even take new adjusters?

Chris:

Well, yes and no. I think like with anything, you have to have the demand.

If you don't have the demand for an inside or a desk adjuster handling liability or bodily injury, then there's gonna be no demand for new people in there. Right? The veterans are gonna grab those spots first. That's just the way our industry works.

But over the last few years since Covid, what really changed from our perspective as Independent Adjusters is that they industry shifted radically on the traditional insurance side and staff adjusters got laid off big time and they did not bring every body back.

So as that has happened, things have shifted more and more to hiring IAs (independent adjusters) and outsourcing the actual claim handling, not just field inspections, to IA firms.

So we've seen a huge spike in liability claims over the last few years. Lability for those who don’t know is when you’re at Walmart and you back into someone’s vehicle, it has to be someone’s fault. Either your’s, theirs or both. But someone has to assume liability.

So what a liability adjuster does is process that claim and determine who is at fault.

There are two types of liability adjusters I know of:

Simple or Express liability claims adjusters

This is where new people tend to start. They’re not making decisions about who’s at fault or who’s liable—that’s already been determined because someone said “I’m at fault, I backed into them.”

So you’re just calling to get statements from them, processing the claim, looking at the estimate and writing the check if needed.

Complex Libility claims adjusters

This is where both people could be at fault, one 70% and one 30% at fault (for example). A lot of the times lawyers are involved and you really have to make sure you’re on your Ps & Qs. That tends to be where the veteran adjusters end up and are paid way more because there’s more legality involved

So new people get started in simple and express liability all the time. But what we've seen is that a lot of people burn out really quick because they had no idea what it liability even was. So they don't even know the claim process. And so at iPath we try to inform people about that claim process before they get put in that situation so they don’t have to figure out step 1-7.

We know what those steps are in auto and property a lot of times, but we don't know what that is in liability. And so once you show up, then you can take on the specifics of the system…there's no estimating, you're just with the insurance company system and trying to figure out what processes they want.

Can you get a remote property claims desk work job without experience?

Matt:

On the property side, it depends on the IA firm and on the carrier (because carriers might not want new adjusters handling certain things).

But if both are on board and are cool with taking new, inexperienced adjusters for desk work, it’s generally because they have more resources to dedicate to training those new people.

As a property desk adjuster, you’re going to be writing estimates, talking on the phone with the insured, making coverage decisions—all things that require a pretty high level of trust.

If you make the wrong call on a claim, it creates more work for everybody and puts that carrier’s relationship with the insured or customer at risk.

I’ve asked firms who’s main deal is desk claims whether new adjusters can jump work as remote desk adjusters and two and a few years ago they probably would have said no, but these days are different. They are putting more resources into when they split that roll up—with one person in the field doing the inspection, photos, etc. and another at a desk writing up that estimate, making coverage calls, or becoming the main point of contact for the insured.

Chris:

That used to be exclusively, it seems, fo staff adjusters. Those who were employed W2 by the insurance companies. But over the last few years, we're seeing more and more that gravitate towards IAs (indepedent adjusters).

I think where we're at in our industry, everyone is afraid of AI (artificial intelligence) [taking over our jobs] but the future of our industry is “it's either AI or it's IA!”

Especially in auto. They're always trying to squeeze the field guy out so that that fee schedule is not there.

But there's no way they're gonna be able to remove us completely from the process. But we're gonna have increasingly more unique remote roles, and that is all coming to IAs [rather than staff] at least for now.

CTA Graphics

What other type of insurance claims jobs are available?

Property insurance claims jobs

Matt:

So when it comes to property insurance claims jobs, you’ve got:

Residential property claims
Daily claims
Catastrophe property claims
Commercial claims
Farm and ranch claim (one of my favorites. It can be a large operation with multiple locations—a house, grain bins, elevators, outbuildings, fencing etc. and sometimes even farm equipment is scheduled on their particular policy)
Crop claims
Condo claims (which is kind of a hybrid between residential and commercial)

So there's some interesting things and you can niche down into these roles and become the go-to person for that thing.

If you’re known for handling commercial claims, you might get a call after a big hail storm in Minneapolis where there’s a big area full of apartments complexes and condos and the IA firm needs someone to come up and handle 500 claims. The losses on commercial tend to be a lot bigger, and the materials to repair it cost a lot more, and so you can make gobs of money on a single claim.

I remember the very first commercial claim that I did was the AT&T office center in Omaha. They had a bunch of air handlers on the roof that had the fins, like an AC unit, but they were giant. There were hundreds of square feet of these things and we had to pay tends of thousands of dollars to replace all of them.

Chris:

Are commercial claims kind of the top tier for property? As far as earning potential?

Matt:

Commercial or anything associated with doing large buildings, is are generally the highest paying types of claims. It’s going to take you a while to do them, but each one of them is going to be like a giant payday.

AUTO insurance claims jobs

Chris:

So that's super similar to the commercial auto side.

So for auto you have:

“Standard” or “private” auto (a lot of time motorcycles and marine get lumped into this category)
RV claims
Heavy equipment claims (or commercial truck, semi-truck, and heavy equipment)
Remote desk adjusting
- Total loss
- Simple liability / Express Liability
- FNOL (first notice of loss - kind of like a call center role where you take insured’s initial call to their insurance companies)
- Complex liability
- Bodily injury

The more niche you are the more you can demand a higher price tag.

General claims adjusters

Matt:

There's one like last kind of property role and that is a general adjuster.

This is the person who gets called when Tom Hanks toilet overflows and it floods 6,000 square feet of half inch thick Brazillian hardwood flooring.

Whether it’s a big claim or small claim, it’s Tom Hanks, right? So they aren’t going to pull some guy off the desk from the Aneheim office.

They are going to send the most senior, experienced adjuster they have—someone to give Tom Hanks the white glove service and discretion needed to run this claim. Someone who’s not going to run around taking selfies with Tom Hank’s solid gold toilet.

This person will work with Tom Hank’s architect, engineer, contractor, designer and whoever else to close this claim and get things back in order for Tom.

They are going to have high level authority, meaning this person is typically a staff adjuster at a firm or at a carrier.

Public Adjusters

Matt:

On the property side, the public adjuster is the ambulance chaser. (And I say that with love, you guys. I really do.)

This primarily come into play when a homeowner doesn’t have time or doesn’t want to deal with the insurance company or the company’s adjuster, they will hire a public adjuster to do it for them.

They're an expert in all parts of the claims process (restoration construction, estimating etc.) and can represent the insured throughout the entire process.

They are there to make sure that the claim is accurate and the insured is properly paid.

When I joke about them being the ambulance chaser, I mean there are some public adjusters that will canvas neighborhoods after hail storms or after hurricanes and hand their cards out and try to get people to sign contracts with them.

They will fluff a $10,000 claim up to a $45,000 claim because, you know…porta potties, temporary utility sinks, PPE, etc.

I don't consider them to be be independent adjusters. In an ideal world, they are more an expert consultant and assistant to help the property owner in their time of need when they don’t know how to proceed with a claim, especially a large loss claim. That’s the best case scenario.

Worst case scenario is they are out there trying to get little old ladies to 40% of the claim to them on a $20,000 claim to replace their roof…which they didn’t need a public adjuster for.

A public adjuster is give power of attorney, which means as the independent adjuster assigned by the carrier to that claim, you now deal with the public adjuster, and not the homeowner.

Chris:

Well, Matt got his true feelings out on that one. That’s for sure. He feels better now.

And hopefully you feel better as the view/listener/reader, and that you come out of this with a little better understanding of where the most money is in the industry.

It really depends on what you want to do…

Matt:

And there’s a progression, right? Like, you can't jump straight to farm and ranch from nothing.

You can't do one hurricane and then go be the go-to commercial guy.

There’s a reason those roles pay more—it is because their is a lot more complexity, especially with policy analysis.

But you gotta start somewhere, right?

The reason you don’t see any super advanced commercial adjuster trainings out there is that people generally get their “in” through doing auto or CAT property first.

They cultivate into those roles. Maybe their third storm manager will toss 6 commercial claims in with their 50 residential claims. They will work those claims, ask questions, get help, (get their files kicked back a bunch of times) and learn how to do these roles on the job.

Only once they’ve proven themselves can they really niche and become the go-to person for that type of claim.

And that is part of what Chris and I do is to help people with the “getting started” piece—help open the door into a whole new world, and that’s huge because it doesn’t just stop with these independent adjuster roles we covered.

If you wanted to go inside as staff of one of these big companies or IA firms, you literally become the CEO of anything, moving your way up the ranks to a million different roles.

But you have to start somewhere right? And we have the resources to help you do that.

AdjusterTV has recently partnered with some of the top IA firms in the industry to introduce our exclusive new Fast Track To Deployment Certification Program for independent adjusters.

CTA Graphics

This certification was designed with direct input from several major IA firms with the promise that if you pass certification, and learn all these steps to producing a high quality claim and the exact mindset you need to show up on your first storm with, they will move you to the front of the line and give you priority onboarding for newbie deployment opportunities.

FAST TRACK TO DEPLOYMENT ENROLLMENT INFO