Category: Executive Search Insights

By Doug Blair, Managing Partner — The Blair Kenner Group

Every claims organization eventually faces the same budget conversation: do we invest in internal recruiting tools — LinkedIn seats, job board subscriptions, an ATS — or do we pay a retained search fee when we need a senior hire? The honest answer is that neither is universally right. But in the P&C claims ecosystem, the decision often gets framed the wrong way, and it costs organizations time and money they didn’t budget for.

Here’s a straightforward breakdown of both models — what each delivers, where each falls short, and how to think about the decision for the kind of specialized leadership roles that define this industry.

What You’re Actually Buying with Internal Tools

When a TPA or claims operation builds out internal recruiting capability — LinkedIn Recruiter seats, Indeed or ZipRecruiter postings, an ATS to manage applicants — they’re making a bet on volume efficiency. The logic is sound for certain categories of hiring: claims coordinators, administrative roles, junior adjusters, entry-level case managers. These are roles where the talent pool is broader, candidate response rates are reasonable, and the cost of a slower search or a wrong hire is manageable.

Internal tools compound value over time when your team is disciplined about using them. A recruiter who lives in LinkedIn daily, builds pipelines for recurring roles, and actively networks within the claims community can eventually develop real capability. The cost per hire on coordinator and analyst-level roles can be quite low once the infrastructure is in place.

The limitation shows up at the VP and Director level — which is where the stakes are highest and the talent pool is smallest.

What You’re Actually Buying with a Retained Search Firm

A retained search fee — typically structured as a project initiation payment credited against a placement fee at hire — looks expensive on a line item. At 20% of base compensation for a VP of Claims making $175,000, you’re writing a meaningful check. It’s worth understanding what that check actually buys.

Network depth. A firm that works exclusively in the P&C claims ecosystem has relationships with senior professionals who are not on job boards and not responding to cold InMails. They’re reached through trusted, direct conversations between people who already know each other. That access doesn’t exist in a LinkedIn seat.

Speed. A retained firm working from a warm network produces a qualified shortlist in weeks, not months. For a TPA with an open VP of Claims seat, that speed has direct financial value — in avoided productivity loss, in protected carrier relationships, and in the avoided cost of asking someone to stretch beyond their role while the search drags on.

Vetting rigor. A retained process means the firm has skin in the game from day one. They’re not sending volume hoping something sticks — they’re conducting a thorough search and standing behind the outcome. BKG’s 12-month replacement guarantee reflects that commitment. If the placed executive departs or is terminated for performance reasons within the first year, we conduct a full replacement search at no additional fee.

Reduced mis-hire risk. This is the factor that gets underweighted most consistently. A VP-level mis-hire in claims — accounting for severance, lost productivity, downstream vendor and carrier relationship impact, and the cost of a second search — typically runs well into six figures. The retained fee paid to avoid that outcome is almost always the better investment.

The Side-by-Side for Claims Leadership Roles

The Decision Framework

The question isn’t really “LinkedIn or recruiter.” It’s “for this specific role, in this specific market, what approach gives me the best outcome at the lowest total cost?”

For most claims organizations, the answer looks like this:

– Use internal tools for roles where the talent pool is broad enough that active candidate outreach will surface qualified people in a reasonable timeframe. Coordinator, analyst, junior adjuster, and administrative roles generally fit here.

– Engage a retained firm for Director, VP, and C-suite claims roles — especially in specialized functions like IME operations, medical case management, bill review leadership, or claims technology. These are the roles where the talent pool is narrow, passive candidates dominate, and the cost of getting it wrong is too high to absorb.

The cleanest way to frame it: if the wrong hire in this role would keep you up at night, it’s a retained search. If it’s a role you could backfill in 60 days without major disruption, internal tools can reasonably handle it.

A Note on Hybrid Strategies

Most claims organizations that get this right don’t choose one model or the other — they run both deliberately. Internal tools handle the recurring, higher-volume hiring that every operation needs. A retained partner handles the handful of leadership searches per year where access, speed, and accuracy all matter.

The firms that struggle are the ones that try to use internal tools for everything to avoid search fees — and end up with VP-level roles open for five months, a stretched team, and a hire they’re not fully confident in. The fee they avoided often costs more than the one they paid.

BKG places executive talent exclusively in the P&C claims ecosystem — TPAs, IME firms, medical case management, bill review, and claims technology organizations. If you’re deciding how to approach your next claims leadership hire, we’re happy to walk through the options honestly.

By Doug Blair, Managing Partner — The Blair Kenner Group

Confession: the best executive candidates in the P&C claims world rarely “wow” anyone in the first 30 seconds. They win in the quiet, consistent details — the kind that only surface once the small talk ends and the real work begins. After 30 years inside this industry, I’ve sat across from hundreds of claims leaders, and the pattern never changes. The ones who get hired aren’t the loudest in the room. They’re the ones who own their results, know their numbers, and can explain what they actually did — not just what happened on their watch.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

VP-Level and Above: Outcomes, Not Org Charts

In C-suite and VP searches — think VP of Claims, Chief Claims Officer, SVP of TPA Operations — the strongest candidates do something deceptively simple: they talk about outcomes, not activities.

They don’t just say they “led a claims transformation.” They can tell you how severity trends shifted, how reserve accuracy improved quarter-over-quarter, and how they brought skeptical adjusters along for the ride when a new platform rolled out. They know their combined ratios. They know their loss adjustment expense trends. And they can walk you from the problem to the decision to the result without a PowerPoint in sight.

The ones who don’t advance? They stay stuck at the “managed a team of 40” level — as if headcount were an accomplishment rather than a starting point. In the claims ecosystem, that level of answer gets you screened out fast. Hiring executives in this space have seen too much to be impressed by titles alone.

Claims Operations and TPA Leadership: Process Is Half the Story

In claims operations roles — Directors of Operations at TPAs, VP of Field Claims, Regional Claims Managers — the candidates who stand out understand that building a process and making it stick are two different jobs.

The ones who get offers talk about behavior change. They describe how they worked alongside adjusters, IME coordinators, or nurse case managers to adopt new workflows — not just how they “implemented” them. They can name the resistance they ran into and what they did about it. They know that a new claims platform nobody uses is just expensive shelfware.

The candidates who stumble? They either blame “the field” for everything or can’t describe a single moment where they adapted their approach to real-world pushback. In a business where the margin lives in execution, that’s a red flag.

Medical Management and Cost Containment: The Numbers Have to Be Real

In medical case management, IME operations, and bill review leadership, the best candidates come in with specific numbers — and they can defend them.

They know their review acceptance rates. They know what utilization review saved per claim cycle. They can describe the difference between a well-run Independent Medical Examination program and a rubber-stamp operation, and they’ve been on both sides. When I ask about a process improvement they led, they don’t give me a paragraph of soft language — they give me a before-and-after.

The candidates who lose the room are the ones who rely on credential titles and tenure without connecting either to actual outcomes. Longevity in this industry is respected, but it’s not a substitute for results.

Claims Technology: Complexity Has to Sound Simple

For technology leadership roles inside claims organizations — VP of Claims Systems, Director of Claims Technology at a carrier or MGA, or a similar role at a claims SaaS company — the standard is different but the principle is the same.

Top candidates can explain a legacy claims platform migration, an AI triage integration, or a document automation rollout in plain English. They translate complexity without dumbing it down. When you ask how they handled user adoption, they have a story with texture — not a slide deck summary.

The ones who don’t make it weaponize jargon. Every sentence becomes a buzzword salad, and the technical depth never comes. In my experience, that usually means the real work happened somewhere else.

The Real Confession

After 30 years in this industry and more executive searches than I can count, the secret to finding the right claims leader isn’t a magic questionnaire or a clever assessment tool. It’s a disciplined ear for three things: who owns their results, who can tell a clear story under pressure, and who respects the complexity of this business enough to make it understandable.

The P&C claims ecosystem is not a forgiving place to fake it. The best candidates know that — and it shows in every conversation.

At The Blair Kenner Group, that’s the bar we hold. It’s also the bar your next hire should clear.

BKG places executive talent exclusively in the P&C claims ecosystem — TPAs, IME firms, medical case management, bill review, and claims technology organizations. If you’re building a leadership team or looking for your next move, let’s talk.