Insurance runs on detail, deadlines, and trust. A claim gets paid right or it does not. An underwriting call holds up or it costs you. A fraud signal gets caught or it slips through. The people who do this work well share a habit. They read the fine print, document everything, and make a defensible call under pressure. That habit is not easy to hire for.

Military veterans build that habit on day one. They run regulated processes. They handle sensitive records. They make decisions when the facts are messy and the clock is running. For a midsize insurance carrier, agency, or third-party administrator, that pool is a strong fit and most teams overlook it.

This guide shows you which military jobs map to insurance roles. It covers where to find these candidates, how to read a military resume, how to interview, and how to keep them. The roles run from claims adjusting and underwriting to risk, compliance, agency sales, and catastrophe response. This is the insurance-specific playbook. If your hiring also touches banks or lenders, see our companion guide on hiring veterans for finance and banking roles.

Why Do Veterans Fit Insurance Roles?

Insurance work rewards a specific mindset. You need someone who respects process but can still think. Someone who documents a decision so it holds up to an audit. Someone who stays calm when a customer is upset and the facts are unclear. Military training builds all of that, not as a slogan but as a daily job.

Take a claims adjuster. The role is part investigation, part math, part customer service. A veteran who ran supply accountability or processed pay actions has done the same shape of work. They gather facts, apply a rule, write it up, and stand behind the number. The product is different. The discipline is identical.

Underwriting and risk reward analysts who weigh incomplete data and commit to a call. Intelligence analysts do exactly this. They pull signals from many sources, judge the reliability of each, and brief a decision-maker. That is underwriting with a different subject. Compliance roles reward people who treat rules as load-bearing. The military runs on regulation, inspection, and audit. A veteran does not need to learn why the rules matter.

Which Military Jobs Map to Insurance Roles?

You do not need a one-to-one match. You need a candidate whose military work used the same core skills your role needs. Here is how the main insurance functions line up with military jobs.

Claims Adjusting and Examining

Claims is about fact-gathering, rule application, and clear documentation. Several military jobs build this directly. An Army 42A Human Resources Specialist processes benefits, pay actions, and records under audit. A Navy Personnel Specialist handles pay and entitlement claims daily. Both make a determination, document it, and defend it. That is claims work with a uniform on.

Medical claims and disability review need someone who reads clinical records and applies coverage rules. A combat medic carries that fluency. An Army 68W Combat Medic or a Navy Hospital Corpsman knows medical terminology, treatment records, and how to document care. For health, workers comp, or disability lines, that is a real edge.

Underwriting and Risk

Underwriting weighs data, judges risk, and commits to a price. Intelligence analysts do the same analytical work. An Army 35F Intelligence Analyst or an Air Force All-Source Intelligence Analyst pulls data from many sources, scores reliability, and briefs a risk call to leadership. Financial roles fit too. An Army 36B Financial Management Technician works with numbers, controls, and exposure every day.

Fraud, Special Investigations, and Compliance

Special investigations units need people who build a case, follow evidence, and stay objective. Military police and criminal investigators live in that work. An Army 31B Military Police or a Navy Master-at-Arms knows interviews, evidence handling, and report writing. A criminal investigator like an Army 31D or a Marine 5821 has run full cases end to end. For SIU and fraud detection, that background is hard to beat.

Agency Sales and Catastrophe Response

Agency and producer roles reward people who explain complex products and build trust fast. Veterans with leadership and briefing experience do this well. Catastrophe response needs people who deploy on short notice, work long hours in rough conditions, and keep the operation organized. That is a deployment. Logistics and operations veterans run toward that kind of work, not away from it.

How Do You Read a Military Resume for Insurance Roles?

A military resume can look foreign at first. The titles are codes. The achievements are buried in jargon. But the skills you want are there. You just have to translate.

Start with the work, not the title. A line like "managed accountability for $4M in equipment with zero loss across two audits" is a control and documentation story. That is exactly what a claims or compliance role needs. A line about briefing commanders on threat assessments is a risk-analysis story. Read for the verb and the outcome, not the acronym.

Watch how the candidate handled records, money, people, and rules. Those four show up in almost every insurance role. A veteran who ran personnel records for 150 people has handled volume, confidentiality, and audit. Translate that into your terms before you judge fit.

One more note on how the resume reaches you. Most carriers run an applicant tracking system. The ATS racks and stacks resumes against your job description. A strong veteran whose resume uses military words instead of insurance words can rank low and sink down the pile. The candidate is qualified. The keywords just did not match. When you screen, look past the ranking and read for the underlying skill.

Where Do You Find Veteran Candidates for Insurance?

Veterans do not all sit on the big job boards. Many are mid-transition, still in uniform, or searching through veteran-focused channels. To find them, you have to go where they are. A few sources work well for a midsize team.

SkillBridge is one of the strongest. The Department of Defense SkillBridge program lets service members intern with your company during their last 180 days of service. Their salary stays on the military. You get a working tryout with no payroll cost. For claims, underwriting support, or compliance roles, it is a low-risk way to test fit before you make an offer.

State and local channels help too. The Department of Labor Veterans' Employment and Training Service connects employers with transitioning service members through state workforce agencies. Base transition offices run hiring events. And a focused candidate database lets you search by the exact skill you need.

That last channel is where BMR fits. Our platform adds over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month, and more than 60,000 resumes have been built on it. The pool runs across claims-ready, analyst-ready, and investigation-ready backgrounds. You can reach out and source directly instead of waiting for the right resume to land in your inbox.

How Do You Interview a Veteran for an Insurance Role?

The interview is where translation pays off or breaks down. A veteran may describe their work in mission terms. Your job is to map it to the role and ask questions that surface fit.

Ask for a specific decision they made with incomplete information. Insurance is full of these. A good answer shows how they gathered facts, weighed the gaps, made a call, and documented it. That is the core loop of claims and underwriting. If they can walk you through it cleanly, the subject matter is teachable.

Ask how they handled a rule they disagreed with. You want someone who follows the regulation while flagging the problem up the chain. That is compliance maturity. Ask about a time they caught an error or a discrepancy others missed. That surfaces the fraud and audit instinct you need in claims and SIU.

Skip the trick questions about insurance terms they have not learned yet. You are hiring for judgment, work ethic, and integrity. The product knowledge comes with training. For a deeper framework on the conversation itself, see our guide on how to interview a veteran candidate. To sharpen your resume screen before the interview, use our recruiter checklist for screening veteran applicants.

What Does the Insurance Job Market Look Like?

The numbers tell you why a veteran pipeline matters now. Insurance roles are not all growing, but they all turn over. Replacement openings are large even where headcount is flat. That is your real hiring need.

Claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators held about 356,100 jobs in 2024. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment to decline 5 percent through 2034, yet about 21,600 openings are projected each year as workers retire or move on. The median wage was $80,470 in May 2025. So the seats keep opening even as automation reshapes the role.

Insurance underwriters earned a median of $79,880 in May 2024. The BLS projects a 3 percent decline with about 8,200 openings each year. Insurance sales agents are the growth story. They earned a median of $60,370 in May 2024, held about 568,800 jobs, and the field is projected to grow 4 percent with around 47,000 openings each year. Across every line, turnover means you are always hiring. A reliable veteran source helps you fill those seats faster.

How Do You Keep Veteran Hires in Insurance?

Hiring a veteran is the start. Keeping them is where the return shows up. Veterans tend to stay when the work has clear standards, real responsibility, and a path to grow. Insurance offers all three when you set it up right.

Give them a structured first 90 days. Veterans come from a world of clear expectations and feedback. Vague onboarding frustrates them. A defined ramp with milestones and a named mentor lands much better. Our 90-day onboarding plan for veteran employees lays out the structure.

Then give them room to advance. A claims adjuster who masters one line wants the next one. A strong analyst wants harder risk problems. Veterans climb when the ladder is visible. They also value teams that respect the work, not just the headcount. For the full picture on what makes military hires stay, see our guide on veteran employee retention. If your roles lean heavy on data and modeling, our piece on hiring veterans for data and analytics roles covers the analyst track in depth.

Start Building Your Veteran Insurance Pipeline

Insurance is a fit-first industry. The product knowledge is teachable. The detail, the discipline, and the integrity are not. Veterans bring those to the table on day one, and the openings are there year after year across claims, underwriting, and sales.

You do not need a giant corporate program to do this. A midsize carrier, agency, or TPA can start with one role, one SkillBridge intern, or one focused search. The pool is growing every month and it runs deep in the analyst, claims, and investigation backgrounds your roles need.

Ready to source veteran talent for your insurance roles? Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and start filling your pipeline with candidates built for the work.