With insurance premiums up 24% since 20211 and catastrophic weather producing record losses, the answer to success for insurance providers might not lie in sophisticated AI or tighter underwriting; it might lie in teaching claims adjusters to understand the business they're in.
At Openly, VP of Claims Gina Reyes has built a claims department that defies nearly every assumption the insurance industry has operated on for decades. And the results speak for themselves: low attrition, adjusters who volunteer to work extra during catastrophes, and a claims experience that builds customer loyalty in a market where 83% of consumers say they'd switch insurance providers after a single poor claims interaction.2
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To understand why Openly's approach matters, it helps to understand what it's replacing. The insurance industry has long operated on a single training process: hire entry-level adjusters, put them through standardized training programs, and gradually build expertise over years. The insurance industry’s brutal attrition rate of 40-50% for adjusters isn't seen as a problem to solve—it's simply the cost of doing business.
Adjusters follow playbooks designed to minimize deviation and risk, optimizing for speed and consistency rather than judgment or customer outcomes. The focus on cost containment reinforces a culture where adjusters are taught to process claims, not to think about them.
Homeowners in the US spent $21 billion more on insurance in 2024 than in 2021.3 2025 brought the costliest wildfire event in global history, with the Southern California fires producing $40 billion in insured losses.4 Meanwhile, severe convective storms—tornadoes, hail, and damaging winds—have quietly overtaken hurricanes as the costliest insured peril of the century, causing $61 billion in losses in 2025 alone.5
This is the context in which claims departments must operate in 2026. Customer expectations are elevated, trust is fragile, and every claim represents a moment where the insurance provider either delivers on its promise—or loses a customer forever.
Speed matters, but so does fairness, transparency, and the sense that someone actually understands their situation. It's an environment where the traditional insurance training model simply can't deliver what customers need or what carriers require to compete.
Openly’s adjuster attrition, for the record, runs in the low teens.
Most carriers dedicate significant resources to teaching new adjusters fundamentals: how to read an estimate, working with contractors, and assessing property damage. Openly skips that chapter.
"We're too small to teach someone from scratch," Reyes explains. The company intentionally hires seasoned professionals who already possess the technical skills and field experience—who already understand construction terminology, know how to work with contractors, and have seen enough damaged properties to estimate accurately. What they lack is something more fundamental: understanding how their daily decisions affect the entire business.
Openly’s onboarding reflects this approach. New hires spend a week in Boston working alongside other adjusters and leadership. The technical training focuses on systems and tools: the mechanics of working efficiently at a desk.
But the real education centers on the business itself.
Reyes walks her team through concepts that traditionally live in boardrooms: loss ratio, combined ratio, loss adjustment expense allocation. Leaders explain why certain decisions get made and how claims performance affects growth. "When you're at a large company, it's very siloed," she notes. "We try to show them how they fit into the full picture of customer results."
When adjusters understand the business, they make different decisions than adjusters trained only to follow procedures. They understand that the goal isn't to minimize every payout, the goal is to get it right; to fairly assess damage, apply coverage appropriately, and deliver an experience that builds trust during one of the most stressful moments in a homeowner's life.
Perhaps the most distinctive element of Openly's approach is how it trains adjusters to interact with customers, giving customers a choice.
Reyes emphasizes her team offers policyholders options for communication methods—text, email, or voice—and inspection approach, rather than dictating terms. This runs counter to the typical carrier approach of optimizing for internal efficiency and telling customers what they'll receive. "We meet the customer where they want to be met," she explains.
The insurance industry has long optimized claims processes for internal efficiency rather than customer preference. But in 2026, when comparison shopping is effortless and a poor claims experience directly threatens retention, flexibility isn't a luxury. It's a competitive necessity. And flexibility requires adjusters who are adaptable, confident in their judgment, and empowered to make decisions.
Openly's small size creates the advantage of being able to move quickly—and fail fast.
Reyes describes launching a pilot program that lasted two days before the team recognized it wouldn't work and killed it. "We celebrated that," she says. "We're not going to do things that don't make sense."
This agility stands in contrast to the deliberate pace of change at large carriers, where new initiatives might take months to approve and quarters to implement—delayed by the coordination of thousands of employees and legacy systems. Reyes likens it to the difference between a speedboat and a cruise ship, requiring adjusters who can handle rapid pivots without losing their bearings.
For customers, this agility translates into responsiveness. When something isn't working—a communication channel, an inspection vendor, a documentation process—Openly can fix it immediately rather than enduring it for months while a change request works through bureaucratic layers.
Large carriers tend to build processes in silos, optimizing for individual metrics without considering the bigger picture. "People try to solve one problem versus a systematic problem," Reyes explains. "They solve for the dollars and create a lot of unintended consequences." Openly's approach of engaging all levels of the organization in identifying root causes and understanding systematic effects may take longer initially, but prevents the cascading issues that plague carriers who optimize narrowly.
Reyes attributes this directly to the sense of ownership Openly’s training approach creates. "It gives them a sense of accountability and belonging to the entire company, not just the claims team," she notes. "The downstream effect is the team has a lot of pride."
Openly's approach ensures claims team members develop mastery not just of technical skills but of judgment and customer interaction. They have purpose because they see how their work connects to customer outcomes and company success. But the real measure of success isn't employee retention—it's customer retention and satisfaction. This is how training becomes a competitive advantage.
Looking ahead, Reyes sees the skill requirements shifting further toward technological mastery. "We need people who will be comfortable with AI and understand how to use it to be more efficient and effective," she says. The goal isn't to replace human judgment but to augment it, allowing the team to handle more complexity without headcount growth.
This mirrors a broader industry trend. Insurance providers are investing billions in technology that promises to streamline claims. As technology begins to handle more routine assessment and documentation, the human element of claims work becomes less about technical measurement and more about judgment, empathy, and problem-solving.
But it only works if the humans are trained properly.
As Openly scales, Reyes is thinking about how to maintain the ownership mentality while building necessary specialization. Some team members will develop deep expertise in specific areas like complex large losses, while others will continue to generalize. "We're small enough that we can pivot and adapt quickly," Reyes says. "That's part of being a startup."
It's an approach that treats claims professionals as strategic assets rather than operational costs, and recognizes customer satisfaction and employee engagement as linked outcomes, both driven by the same root cause: people who understand what they're doing and why it matters.
For now, that agility gives Openly an edge in an industry where claims experience often determines whether customers renew and agents recommend. In homeowners insurance, where catastrophic weather events are increasing in frequency and severity, and customer switching has never been easier, the quality of claims handling may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.
The training approach isn't just building better adjusters. It's building people who think like business owners, equipped to handle an industry in transition—one claim at a time.
1 Jonathan Delozier. “Rising insurance costs shape homeowner decisions in 2026.” Housingwire. Published 6 January 2026. Accessed 26 March 2026. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/rising-insurance-costs-shape-homeowner-decisions-in-2026/
2 InvoiceCloud. “InvoiceCloud Research: 83% of Consumers Surveyed Would Switch Insurance Carriers After a Poor Claims Experience.” Invoicecloud.net. Published 20 November 2025. Accessed 26 March 2026. https://invoicecloud.net/press-room/invoicecloud-research-83-of-consumers-surveyed-would-switch-insurance-carriers-after-a-poor-claims-experience
3 Consumer Federation of America. “New Report Finds American Homeowners Faced 24% Increase in Homeowners Insurance Premiums Over the Past Three Years.” Consumerfed.org Published 1 April 2025. Accessed 26 March 2026. https://consumerfed.org/press_release/new-report-finds-american-homeowners-faced-24-increase-in-homeowners-insurance-premiums-over-the-past-three-years/
4 Kenneth Araullo. “LA wildfires’ $40 billion insured losses make it 2025's costliest catastrophe – Howden Re.” ReInsurance Business. Published 14 January 2026. Accessed 26 March 2026. https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/reinsurance/news/breaking-news/la-wildfires-40-billion-insured-losses-make-it-2025s-costliest-catastrophe--howden-re-561886.aspx
5 L.S. Howard. “Severe Convective Storms Become Costliest Insured Peril of 21st Century: Aon.” Insurance Journal. Published 21 January 2026. Accessed 26 March 2026. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2026/01/21/855026.htm