In many of my speeches this year, I’ve invited audience participation and heard from many former insurance company adjusters and independent adjusters about their training programs. I’ve particularly asked about the role-playing exercises designed to simulate real-world claim disputes. These exercises, meant to prepare property insurance adjusters for the pressures of negotiation, too often depict public adjusters and roofers as greedy, overbearing, and untrustworthy. Public adjusters, roofers, and mitigation contractors are mocked, caricatured, and portrayed as enemies to be outsmarted rather than professionals to be treated with courtesy and respect.
That may sound like harmless “toughening up,” but it’s not. It’s a cultural cue. And it can have lasting consequences for how adjusters approach real people in real claims.
The Bad: Reinforcing Adversarial Bias and Institutionalized Distrust
When role-playing consistently depicts public adjusters and roofers as “the enemy,” it does more than teach negotiation tactics. This type of role-playing conditions insurance company adjusters’ worldview. Instead of approaching every claim as a search for the truth and a fair outcome, the adjuster learns to see the other side as manipulative and dishonest from the start.
This mindset can corrode the principle and duty of good faith claims handling. Claims professionals are supposed to act as fiduciaries of fairness, balancing the insurer’s duty to its policyholders with the contractual rights of the company. But bias-based training replaces professionalism with tribalism. It undermines what The Claims Environment itself stresses, that claim representatives should treat all parties, including public adjusters, with professional courtesy, respect, and evenhanded communication:
Of course, claim representatives deal with people other than the insureds and claimants. Attorneys may act adversarial, but they need not be regarded as enemies. The rules of professional courtesy always apply to a claim representative’s communications with legal counsel.
Public adjusters are representatives of the insureds. The same rules concerning courtesy to the insured apply in dealing with public adjusters. The claim representative who assumes that all public adjusters are adversaries will only make the claim process more difficult than it need be.
Contractors and vendors should be treated fairly and respectfully. The claim representative will probably deal with contractors and vendors on more than just one claim. The courteous handling of a claim will pave the way for cooperation and good relations in many future claims.
Those words, written by James J. Markham, Kevin M. Quinley, and Layton S. Thompson in The Claims Environment (1993), are timeless and perhaps even more relevant today. They remind us that courtesy and fairness aren’t just soft skills. Instead, they’re ethical obligations rooted in claim professionalism. When insurers ignore that, and instead teach adjusters to ridicule or distrust those on the other side, they erode not only public confidence but also the moral foundation of the industry itself.
Psychologically, once adjusters are repeatedly trained to expect deceit, they begin to see it everywhere. This leads to confirmation bias, where every discrepancy becomes proof of dishonesty, and every disagreement becomes “evidence” of greed. The result is that legitimate advocates for policyholders, who play an essential role in balancing the asymmetry of knowledge and resources, are dismissed or even punished through lowballing, delay tactics, or defensive posturing.
This training also exposes insurers to regulatory and legal risk. Corporate culture is often reflected in internal communications and training materials. These internal communications reveal the insurance company’s true intent. If these communications show that company adjusters were being trained to treat public adjusters as liars and roofers as opportunists, it becomes hard to argue that the company fostered a good-faith claims environment.
I have previously discussed this in Claims Adjusters Are Brainwashed: Public Adjusters Are Not to Be Trusted, and Insurance Company Adjuster Training Scripts and Role Playing.
The Possible Good: Controlled, Contextual Role-Playing
That said—and to be fair and balanced—role-playing itself is not the problem. Instead, it’s how it’s framed and what lessons are drawn from the role-playing.
Used properly, role-playing can be a powerful training tool to prepare company adjusters for the reality that some actors in the field, on all sides, may behave badly. There are dishonest contractors, unscrupulous public adjusters, and unprofessional attorneys, just as there are unethical company adjusters. Pretending otherwise is naïve.
The key is whether the exercise is designed to build professionalism or to reinforce prejudice. Ethical role-playing would:
- Present multiple scenarios, including cooperative, ethical, and unethical public adjusters or roofers.
- Focus on professional response, not character judgment. For example, a question could be posed about “How do you keep the discussion fact-based, document-driven, and courteous?”
- Emphasize de-escalation and problem-solving, not “winning” the argument.
- Anchor the exercise in real policy language and claims standards, showing that fair outcomes come from procedure and principle, not personality.
In that light, property insurance adjusters learn emotional control, empathy, and skill rather than cynicism and a poor attitude. That kind of training aligns perfectly with what Markham, Quinley, and Thompson wrote in The Claims Environment: professional courtesy should never be abandoned, even when dealing with attorneys, public adjusters, contractors, or perceived adversaries.
The Moral Test of a Claims Culture
The deeper implication is that these role-playing sessions reveal a company’s claims culture. If the tone is mocking or derisive, it tells you everything about how the organization truly sees the claims function as a cost-containment weapon rather than a promise-fulfillment mechanism.
But when role-playing is used to develop maturity, professionalism, and skill under pressure, it reflects an organization that still understands that the heart of insurance is trust.
In short, bad training and improper role playing teach adjusters who to distrust. Good role-playing teaches adjusters how to stay trustworthy even when others aren’t.
Today’s blog originated from my recent podcast interview with insurance educator Christopher Boggs, noted in Has the Insurance Industry Forgotten the Meaning of Its Own Policies, and a review of a number of my speeches during 2025. Boggs suggested that many in the insurance industry need to double down on training because it is imperative for the insurance product to function properly. I agree.
At the same time, in reflection, I may have been too harsh in my criticism of the role-playing aspects found in training. Property insurance adjusters and all of us need to learn how to deal with all types of people. As I stated in this post, it would be naive to think that everybody is going to play by the rules of good faith or act professionally.
Thought for the Day
“Prejudice, not truth, is the mother of ignorance.”
—William Hazlitt