Managing the unseen mental health effects of handling clients’ stress  

Insurance adjusters are used to caring for other people, but they don’t appear to be taking care of their own mental health, panellists suggested at the Ontario Independent Adjusters’ Association annual general meeting in Toronto.

Certainly, last year’s record catastrophe season took a mental health toll on Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry professionals. Thirty-eight percent of 865 P&C insurance professionals surveyed last August reported they were either “highly stressed” or suffered “acute” stress after four major natural catastrophes in the span of a month created more than 2,200 insurance claims to handle, according to Canadian Underwriter’s inaugural 2024 Mental Health Survey.  

Customer-facing employees bore the brunt of that workload stress — 73% of claims professionals and 70% of consumer-facing employees in the survey cited heavy workload as their Number 1 stressor. It’s also cited as the top stressor by 60% of people in the survey with 10 or fewer years of experience. 

“In our industry, we’re very client-centred. We are helping others through loss,” said Tammie Kip, co-founder of Friends of the Industry Healing Together (FIHT), during the panel discussion.  

“That’s what claims adjusters do — they help people get back on their feet. And a lot of times, we’ll take on that physiological response of suffering that others are going through,” said Kip, who’s also director of claims digital transformation and chief of staff to the COO at Allstate Canada.

“We don’t realize that we’re taking on additional stress [when] we’re there to help others through stress.”  

Kip made her comments when asked whether there is something unique to the industry that may make it more challenging to open up about mental health.

Managing mental health

Taking on and solving clients’ stressors is certainly endemic, but not exclusive, to the P&C industry.  

“We’re dealing with that client-centred stress day-to-day, and I think maybe not even realizing that it’s having an impact on us,” Kip said. 

It’s not just adjusters who must demonstrate empathy, compassion and patience to their clients in stressful times. Mental health professionals also face similar stressors, suggests Kip. 

Christina Fuda, senior mental health strategist at the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, adds that many industries face significant mental health challenges for their workers. 

“We’re seeing across all industries that workplaces are putting too much stress on their employees, quite frankly, and what we’re seeing is we’re seeing an increase in mental health claims,” she says.  

There’s a business imperative for improving mental health in the workplace, Fuda says. “The more stress we put on employees, you’re actually decreasing productivity, and you’re actually not making as much money.” 

Panellists say it’s imperative workplaces develop an informed understanding of mental health — and that starts with day-one training.  

“We train adjusters to adjust claims. We train underwriters to underwrite policies and products, but we don’t give them training on how to manage your own mental health while you’re dealing with these things,” says Kip. “It should form part of claims school. It should form part of underwriting school.” 

Workplace mental health training also has the added benefit of attracting new hires, specifically from the newest workforce entrants, Fuda said. “We see it so many of the young generation; they actually look at it as a perk and a benefit — like, ‘My organization cares about me because in orientation they told us also about the mental health benefits of the organization.’”