AIC study guide
AIC · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Associate in Claims (AIC) is a designation program from The Institutes for claims professionals who want a broader, more strategic view of claims handling. Its coursework is organized around two core courses-AIC 300: Claims in an Evolving World and AIC 301: Expanding Your Claims Perspective-plus an ethics requirement, Ethics 311: Ethical Decision Making in Risk & Insurance. Candidates can also choose from elective courses focused on evaluating auto, liability, property, and workers compensation claims. The designation sits within the claims and underwriting family of credentials and is relevant to roles in claims, customer service, and related insurance operations. Topics on this exam: AIC 300: Claims in an Evolving World, AIC 301: Expanding Your Claims Perspective, and Ethics 311: Ethical Decision Making in Risk & Insurance. The AIC study guide has 3 sections and about 855 words.
01Claims in an Evolving World
Claims professionals work where contract, customer, law, and technology meet. AIC 300 asks you to see the forces reshaping that point. Key concepts include data analytics and artificial intelligence, telematics and drones, virtual adjusting, social inflation and large verdicts, third-party litigation funding, climate and catastrophe patterns, cyber and intangible losses, supply-chain disruption, workforce turnover, and rising customer expectations. Questions often ask you to separate drivers of frequency from drivers of severity.
287 words, about 1 min02Expanding Your Claims Perspective
AIC 301 widens the lens from file handling to the insurer’s economics. Claims is part of a value chain that includes underwriting, actuarial, finance, reinsurance, legal, sales, and customer service. Understand reserves (case and incurred-but-not-reported), loss adjustment expense, paid versus incurred losses, recoveries (deductibles, salvage, subrogation, reinsurance), and ratios such as loss ratio and combined ratio. Common measures include cycle time, severity, frequency, leakage, reopen rates, and customer satisfaction.
267 words, about 1 min03Ethical Decision Making in Risk & Insurance
Ethics 311 focuses on how to decide, not just what to decide. Know the major lenses: consequentialist thinking weighs outcomes; deontological thinking weighs duties and rules; virtue ethics asks what a person of integrity would do. Insurance adds fiduciary duties, fairness, confidentiality, objectivity, competence, and compliance with unfair-claims-practice rules. Typical conflicts include pressure to meet closing or reserve targets, handling a claim involving a friend or relative, learning damaging information about a claimant, using social-media or AI-derived data, and discovering suspected fraud.
301 words, about 2 min