What AI means for P&C talent development

As insurers move from artificial intelligence (AI) pilots to embedding AI into core underwriting and claims workflows, 2026 will be an important transition year for Canada’s property and casualty (P&C) insurance sector.

AI is already delivering tangible benefits, including faster turnaround times in claims, underwriting and customer service, while improving efficiency and consistency across high-volume operations. 

Less visible is how the shift will influence the way expertise is required to make critical judgments; and how that is developed inside insurance organizations.

For decades, the P&C industry relied on a layered talent model. Entry-level employees performed routine and repetitive work, which over time exposed them to claims patterns, policy interpretation, and exceptions. This familiarity developed employees’ ability to make judgment calls. They acquired key skill sets through experience, repetition, and mentorship rather than through formal instruction.

This structure supported continuity and helped maintain technical depth across generations of P&C industry professionals.

As AI takes on more of this foundational work, senior expertise is not being displaced, but the pathway through which individuals develop into senior experts will narrow. By streamlining today’s workflows, insurers risk reducing the number of roles that historically supported the development of judgment.

Regulation and efficiency

Converging operational and regulatory changes are creating momentum behind this shift.

New pay transparency requirements will soon mandate public disclosure of salary ranges. These measures are intended to promote fairness, consistency and accountability, in line with broader regulatory and societal expectations.

Operationally, though, they may influence hiring behaviour.

When compensation is transparent and hiring processes are more closely scrutinized, organizations often become more cautious when making recruitment decisions. A company’s flexibility can narrow. Developmental or longer-term hires may be more difficult to justify, particularly in operational environments where performance metrics emphasize speed, volume, and near-term outcomes.

At the same time, AI is increasingly part of the hiring process; AI-enabled efficiency increasingly rewards immediate contribution. Together, these dynamics can shift hiring preferences toward candidates who arrive with fully formed experience rather than those expected to grow into a role.

Over time, this may create a more polarized talent structure, with experienced professionals concentrated at senior levels, fewer entry points at early career stages and a thinner middle layer that has historically produced future technical leaders and managers.

Time horizons

Workforce risks rarely materialize quickly.

The P&C insurance sector has long operated with an implicit time lag, as junior employees gain experience, mid-level professionals mature, and senior leaders eventually retire. Historically, this gradual progression has let organizations avoid significant disruptions.

But the current environment is characterized by numerous pressures simultaneously affecting the talent pipeline. AI-driven efficiency is reducing early-career exposure to complex files. Regulatory expectations are shaping more conservative hiring practices. The remaining workforce continues to age. Simultaneously, fewer international students are entering Canada to supplement domestic talent pipelines in insurance-adjacent disciplines supporting underwriting, claims, analytics, actuarial, and operational roles.

Although the implications of these trends may not manifest in the near term, they’re more likely to surface between 2030 and 2035. By then, the trend toward retirements will have accelerated and fewer experienced successors will be available to step into complex underwriting, claims and leadership roles.

By the time gaps show up in underwriting outcomes, claims handling or leadership depth, remediation could be difficult. Rebuilding lost capabilities won’t happen quickly or easily. In this sense, the issue is less about short-term hiring and more about long-term structural resilience.

Industry considerations

The P&C industry has shown it’s capable of identifying and managing near-term operational risks. AI adoption is improving consistency and customer experience, while regulatory changes are reinforcing transparency and accountability around job descriptions and hiring practices.

Key to moving forward will be the ability to match these advances with sufficient attention to how judgment and experience are cultivated over time.

While efficiency gains are visible and measurable, changes in judgment capacity, if they happen, will likely be gradual and subtle, and only measurable after several years.

Today’s gains support, not constrain, the industry’s future decision-making capacity to sustain performance over the coming decade.

Jorrit Wit, is managing director and talent advisor at Fractional Recruiting.