Top 12 Claims Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the competitive landscape of claims, standing out means more than listing job titles. You need proof-of-work skills—tools you actually use—to show you can move a claim from intake to resolution without drama, delay, or risk. Below, twelve skills that signal you’re ready for the messy, real-world mechanics of claims work.

Claims Skills

1. Negotiation
2. Analysis
3. Excel
4. Salesforce
5. Documentation
6. SAP
7. Investigation
8. Communication
9. Adaptability
10. Decision-Making
11. Oracle
12. Time Management

1. Negotiation

Negotiation in claims is the give-and-take that transforms dispute into settlement. Parties share facts, test positions, and inch toward a number—or a remedy—that everyone can live with.

Why It's Important

It shortens cycle times, defuses conflict, and lands fair outcomes. That saves money and relationships, which is the whole game.

How to Improve Negotiation Skills

Sharpen the edge and keep it steady:

1. Prepare like a hawk: Know the file, policy language, applicable statutes, reserves, and your walk-away point.

2. Build rapport fast: Human first, position second. Small talk with purpose lowers defenses.

3. Communicate cleanly: Short sentences. No hedging. Confirm understanding as you go.

4. Pick a strategy: Competitive when facts are ironclad. Collaborative when mutual gains exist.

5. Define your BATNA: If no deal, what then? Knowing that limit gives you spine.

6. Stay even-keeled: Don’t rush. Silence is a tool; use it.

7. Listen actively: Reflect back their points and test assumptions to uncover real interests.

Do the groundwork, and the number often moves itself.

How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume

2. Analysis

Analysis is the disciplined sorting of facts, policy, and precedent to decide what happened, what’s covered, and what it’s worth.

Why It's Important

Without clean analysis, you overpay, underpay, or stall. With it, you resolve the right claim, at the right value, for the right reason.

How to Improve Analysis Skills

Make your thinking visible and verifiable:

1. Define the question: Coverage, liability, damages—state the decision you must make.

2. Collect the right data: Statements, photos, estimates, medicals, logs, prior losses—relevant, timely, complete.

3. Use the right tools: Spreadsheets, visualization, and checklists to cut through noise.

4. Challenge assumptions: Seek disconfirming evidence. What would make this wrong?

5. Peer review: A quick second set of eyes catches blind spots.

6. Refine: Tighten conclusions; remove fluff.

7. Present clearly: Plain language, concise summaries, simple visuals.

How to Display Analysis Skills on Your Resume

3. Excel

Excel is the claims analyst’s pocketknife—calculations, data shaping, and reporting in one place.

Why It's Important

It streamlines ingestion, trending, and valuation so you can spot issues early and make decisions quickly.

How to Improve Excel Skills

Go beyond basics:

1. Modern lookups: Learn XLOOKUP, INDEX+MATCH, and SUMIFS for precise pulls.

2. Pivot smart: Build PivotTables and slicers for instant drill-down on loss types, regions, and adjuster loads.

3. Data discipline: Use Tables, data validation, and named ranges to reduce errors.

4. Conditional formatting: Flag outliers—aging claims, reserve spikes, missed SLAs.

5. Automation: Record macros and use basic VBA to standardize imports and monthly reports.

6. Power tools: Learn Power Query for cleanup and Power Pivot/DAX for large-model analysis.

How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume

4. Salesforce

Salesforce is a CRM platform that can house claim intake, workflows, communications, and reporting in one hub.

Why It's Important

Centralized data, automated steps, fewer handoffs. Faster resolutions and cleaner audit trails follow.

How to Improve Salesforce Skills

Build for speed and clarity:

1. Automate with Flow: Migrate legacy Process Builder logic to Salesforce Flow for routing, notifications, and escalations.

2. Claims-specific workflows: Map intake → triage → investigation → settlement → closure. Enforce required fields and SLA timers.

3. Service Cloud: Use case management, knowledge, and omni-channel to keep conversations and files together.

4. Integrate: Connect policy admin, billing, or external claims systems via MuleSoft/APIs to eliminate swivel-chair work.

5. Data quality: Validation rules, duplicate management, and regular stewardship to keep records trustworthy.

6. Dashboards: Real-time queues, backlog, cycle time, leakage, and recovery metrics.

7. Ongoing training: Short, role-based refreshers when features change—keep adoption high.

How to Display Salesforce Skills on Your Resume

5. Documentation

Documentation is the paper (and digital) backbone—evidence, notes, forms, and approvals that support every decision you make.

Why It's Important

If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen. Good files withstand audits, disputes, and time.

How to Improve Documentation Skills

Make files bulletproof without turning them into novels:

1. Capture the essentials: Who, what, when, where, how much—tight and timestamped.

2. Use templates: Standard note structures and checklists reduce omissions.

3. Summarize sources: When citing reports or records, write a one-line takeaway and store the document in the file. Avoid vague references.

4. Version control: Label updates and keep the prior record; never overwrite critical details.

5. Compliance-first: Align with privacy, retention, and regulatory requirements. Add required attestations.

6. Audit your files: Periodic spot checks to fix drift and reinforce standards.

How to Display Documentation Skills on Your Resume

6. SAP

SAP is an enterprise platform (ERP) that ties together finance, procurement, supply chain, and more. For claims, it anchors data integrity, postings, and reporting across departments.

Why It's Important

Integrated processes mean fewer reconciliations, faster settlements, and reliable financials.

How to Improve SAP Skills

Make the system do the heavy lifting:

1. Performance tuning: Streamline process variants, clean master data, and monitor batch jobs to keep throughput high.

2. Fiori UX: Deploy role-based Fiori apps so adjusters and reviewers see only what they need, quickly.

3. Automation: Use SAP Build Process Automation (successor to classic RPA) for repetitive steps like data entry and notifications.

4. Master Data Governance: Enforce consistent vendors, customers, and materials for accurate claims postings.

5. Analytics: Connect to SAP Analytics Cloud for real-time KPIs—cycle time, recovery, reserve adequacy.

6. Training and change: Short, scenario-based learning beats long manuals. Reinforce with job aids.

7. Community and support: Leverage internal COE guidance and user groups to solve recurring pain points.

How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume

7. Investigation

Investigation is the structured hunt for facts—interviews, records, site checks, and timelines—to verify what’s real and what’s noise.

Why It's Important

It protects against fraud, supports fair payouts, and keeps your decisions defensible.

How to Improve Investigation Skills

Be systematic, not scattershot:

1. Scope first: Define the questions you must answer and the evidence required.

2. Plan contacts: Identify who to interview, in what order, and what to ask. Lock in consistency.

3. Triangulate: Verify claims data with documents, metadata, and third-party confirmations.

4. Preserve chain of custody: Date-stamp, label, and secure files to maintain integrity.

5. Analyze timelines: Build a chronology to spot gaps and contradictions.

6. Report clearly: Findings, evidence, and conclusions—separated, sourced, and concise.

How to Display Investigation Skills on Your Resume

8. Communication

Communication in claims is the steady exchange—status updates, explanations, negotiations—that keeps everyone aligned and moving.

Why It's Important

Clarity cuts rework. Tone builds trust. Together, they speed resolution.

How to Improve Communication Skills

Make every message do work:

1. Active listening: Reflect, clarify, and confirm before you conclude.

2. Be brief, be plain: Short sentences. No jargon unless required by policy language—then define it.

3. Lead with empathy: Acknowledge impact while staying factual and consistent.

4. Close loops: Summarize decisions, next steps, and timelines in writing.

5. Be tool-savvy: Use the right channel—email for record, phone for nuance, portal for transparency.

6. Invite feedback: Quick checks (“Does this make sense?”) prevent drift.

How to Display Communication Skills on Your Resume

9. Adaptability

Adaptability is your ability to shift—regulations change, facts evolve, priorities flip, and you still deliver.

Why It's Important

Claims are dynamic. Flexible pros keep service steady and compliant when the ground moves.

How to Improve Adaptability Skills

Train for change:

1. Reframe fast: Treat change as input, not threat. Ask: what’s the new constraint?

2. Continuous learning: Track policy updates, case law, systems, and industry trends.

3. Problem-solve under pressure: Timebox options, test one, iterate.

4. Emotional intelligence: Notice your stress signals; respond, don’t react.

5. Flexible execution: Keep two viable paths to the same outcome when possible.

6. Resilience habits: Debrief tough files, reset, and move on.

How to Display Adaptability Skills on Your Resume

10. Decision-Making

Decision-making is the disciplined choice—approve, deny, investigate, subrogate—based on evidence and policy.

Why It's Important

It drives financial outcomes, regulatory compliance, and customer trust, all in one stroke.

How to Improve Decision-Making Skills

Make choices that hold up:

1. Gather relevant facts: Complete, corroborated, current.

2. Analyze: Map facts to policy language and applicable rules; quantify exposure.

3. Generate options: Pay now, partial pay, denial with rationale, further investigation, or alternative resolution.

4. Weigh trade-offs: Cost, time, legal risk, customer impact.

5. Decide and execute: Document rationale; set follow-ups.

6. Review outcomes: Post-mortem high-impact decisions to improve next time.

How to Display Decision-Making Skills on Your Resume

11. Oracle

Oracle refers to the company’s database and application technologies commonly used in claims to store, process, and report on high-volume transactional data.

Why It's Important

It delivers secure, reliable, and scalable data handling—essential for accurate processing, analytics, and auditability across the claims lifecycle.

How to Improve Oracle Skills

Tune for performance and clarity:

1. Index intelligently: Create and maintain the right indexes; consider automatic indexing in supported versions.

2. SQL tuning: Use plans and advisors to optimize queries that hit large claims tables.

3. Partition large tables: Range or list partitioning reduces query time on historical claims.

4. Result caching: Cache frequently requested aggregates and reference data.

5. Concurrency discipline: Understand locking behavior; choose isolation levels that balance integrity and throughput.

6. Data model hygiene: Normalize where needed; denormalize where it removes costly joins for common reports.

7. Storage and I/O: Use ASM or equivalent best practices to remove bottlenecks.

How to Display Oracle Skills on Your Resume

12. Time Management

Time management is your plan for the hours: triage, investigation, communication, and closure done inside deadlines.

Why It's Important

Late files cost money and goodwill. On-time work keeps reserves right and customers calm.

How to Improve Time Management Skills

Protect your calendar like it’s inventory:

1. Prioritize ruthlessly: Use an Eisenhower matrix to sort urgent vs. important.

2. Set SMART goals: Make tasks measurable and time-bound so they actually finish.

3. Leverage software: Use claims systems and task queues to automate reminders and handoffs.

4. Time block: Dedicated windows for complex files; batch similar tasks.

5. Cut distractions: Quiet hours, notifications off, tight agendas.

6. Delegate: Route work to the right role—don’t hoard tasks that others can do.

7. Review weekly: Adjust workload, renegotiate deadlines early, clear stale tasks.

How to Display Time Management Skills on Your Resume