40 Remote Inspection Statistics for 2026: Claims, Property, Vehicles and Field Service

How much inspection work is done remotely in 2026? In US auto claims, virtual handling went from under 15% of claims before 2020 to a little over 60% a year after the lockdowns. In building departments the share is far lower: 59% of jurisdictions in a 2021 survey still inspected in person only. In field service, one in five truck rolls goes out to a problem that could have been settled without the trip.

This page collects 40 statistics on the inspection itself: how many are done remotely, what a visit costs in time and money compared with a remote one, how thin inspector and adjuster capacity is, what a truck roll costs, and whether customers want to do the capture themselves. Every figure names the organisation and year and links to the page where we read it on 30 September 2026. Figures published by a company that sells software or services in the field are labelled vendor-reported.

We build Venta Capture, a product of VentaVid. It sends a customer, claimant or technician a single-use link and guides them through photos and video recorded in the session, on their own phone. None of the numbers below are ours. If they describe your own queue of site visits, book a demo and bring one inspection type to test.

For claim volumes, cycle times and satisfaction scores, see our insurance claims statistics for 2026. For edited photos and deepfakes in submitted evidence, see the AI insurance fraud statistics. Neither set is repeated here.

Key highlights

• Virtual handling of US auto claims went from under 15% before the pandemic to a little over 60% by mid 2021 (LexisNexis Risk Solutions, vendor-reported)
• Carriers that automated claims reported cycle times 1 to 15 days shorter per claim and 3 to 10 times more cases per adjuster (LexisNexis Risk Solutions, 2019, vendor-reported)
• US employment of claims adjusters, appraisers, examiners and investigators is projected to fall 6% between 2025 and 2035, with 21,600 openings a year to replace leavers (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• 59% of US building jurisdictions inspected in person only, 39% mixed remote and in person, 2% were remote only (NEEP and MEEA with the International Code Council, 2021)
• 20% of truck rolls are unnecessary (Aquant, 2026, vendor-reported)
• Nearly 80% of US homeowners would use their smartphone to document property damage for a claim (Xceedance, 2025, vendor-reported)
• Satisfaction drops 47 points when a claimant submits photos and still has to wait for an in-person inspection (J.D. Power, 2022)

What the sources report for a visit versus a remote inspection

The rows come from different sectors and different methods, so read them as separate findings and not as one benchmark.

How much inspection already happens remotely?

Insurance moved first and furthest, and auto moved before property.

Before the pandemic, fewer than 15% of US auto claims were handled virtually. During lockdown the share went to nearly 100%, and by mid 2021 it had settled at a little over 60%. The figures come from the 2021 Future of Claims study and are based on LexisNexis's conversations with insurers. "Virtual" here means handled remotely by insurer staff, for example with photo estimating or video. (Vendor-reported, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, via Repairer Driven News)

38% of auto insurance executives said their carrier was using virtual handling in 2017. By 2019, 95% of carriers were using or considering it. The 2017 study interviewed 24 senior executives, the 2019 edition 24 executives from the top 50 auto carriers, so these are small samples of large companies. (Vendor-reported, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, 2017 and 2019)

Photo estimating grew from 0.9% of US auto estimates in 2016 to 3.9% by September 2017. That is the starting point of the curve. CCC's 2026 report puts the same channel at more than a quarter of repairable appraisals, a figure covered in our claims statistics page. (Vendor-reported, CCC Intelligent Solutions, via Repairer Driven News)

Staff appraisers wrote 16.5% of repairable auto appraisals in 2025, down 0.8 points, and independent appraisers 6.9%, down one point. These are the two channels where someone travels to the vehicle, and both are shrinking. (Vendor-reported, CCC Intelligent Solutions, Crash Course 2026, via Repairer Driven News)

Only 11% of US property claimants used digital channels for every major step of the claim: first notice of loss, estimation and status updates. Property is where the remote share is still small. The study is based on 5,724 homeowners who filed a claim, fielded April to December 2021. (J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study, via Claims Journal)

The pattern is consistent: a virtual inspection becomes the default for simple, visible damage first, and the person with the clipboard is kept for the complex file.

What does a remote inspection save compared with a site visit?

Nobody publishes a clean industry average for the cost of one field inspection in claims. What exists are reported effects, and a few worked examples from building inspection.

Carriers using claims automation reported cycle times 1 to 15 days shorter per claim. The same carriers reported removing one to four manual touches from each claim. (Vendor-reported, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, 2019 Future of Claims Report)

Those carriers also reported a 50% reduction in processing cost and 3 to 10 times more cases processed per adjuster. Self-reported by insurance executives, not audited, and wide enough as a range to show how much depends on the claim type. (Vendor-reported, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, 2019)

Property claimants who used digital tools through the whole claim, including submitting photos for the estimate, saw repairs start nine days sooner. Their overall satisfaction was 33 points higher, on a 1,000-point scale, than customers who used no digital tools. (J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study, via Carrier Management)

Satisfaction was 47 points lower when customers submitted photos and still had to arrange an in-person inspection. J.D. Power's analysts called this "hybrid digital limbo". It is the most useful warning in the data: asking for photos and then sending someone anyway is worse than either route alone. (J.D. Power 2022, via Claims Journal)

HVAC contractors in California reported waiting 2 to 6 hours for a building inspection that takes 5 to 15 minutes. The finding comes from contractor interviews for a SPUR policy brief. (SPUR, February 2026, spur.org)

One Bay Area contractor put the permit and inspection of a simple HVAC job at $1,367.70, of which $1,200 was administrative time and standby cost. The permit fee itself was $167.70. It is a single worked example, but it shows where the money goes: waiting for the visit, not the visit. (SPUR, February 2026, spur.org)

The J.D. Power pair is the one to take to a claims meeting. Photos only pay off when the file they produce is good enough to decide on, which is an argument for guiding the capture and against a bare upload button. We wrote about that in photo evidence for insurance claims and in how to reduce claims cycle time.

How short is inspector and adjuster capacity?

Every sector on this page has the same problem: fewer experienced people than inspections.

The US had 389,700 claims adjusters, appraisers, examiners and investigators in 2025, and employment is projected to decline 6% by 2035, a loss of 21,800 jobs. BLS names software that evaluates photographs of damaged property as one reason fewer people are needed per claim. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook)

Even so, about 21,600 openings a year are projected over the decade, all of them to replace people who leave. A shrinking occupation that still has to hire 21,600 people a year is a retention problem. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook)

Chief claims officers at leading P&C insurers reported average attrition of 20%, with each departure taking nearly six years of experience with it. The figures come from Deloitte's discussions with chief claims officers, not from a survey with a published sample. (Deloitte Center for Financial Services, September 2025, deloitte.com)

Onboarding a new adjuster costs between $8,000 and $10,000 in the first year, and productivity among new hires has dropped by about 15%. Same source, same caveat. (Deloitte Center for Financial Services, September 2025, deloitte.com)

State Farm plans to add about 3,000 claims jobs in 2027, a 10% increase on roughly 30,000 claims employees who handle nearly 11 million claims a year. To get there it expects to hire around 5,500 people, because attrition has to be covered first. (State Farm, 25 September 2026, newsroom.statefarm.com)

Nearly 85% of US building code officials were over 45, more than 80% planned to retire within 15 years and more than 30% within five. The survey drew 3,850 responses in 2014, which puts the end of that 15-year window at 2029. (International Code Council and National Institute of Building Sciences, The Future of Code Officials)

The US Food and Drug Administration conducted 1,065 drug manufacturing inspections in fiscal year 2023, 36% fewer than the 1,671 of fiscal year 2019. The agency attributed the gap in part to reduced investigator capacity. (US Government Accountability Office, GAO-25-106775, November 2024)

Remote inspection does not create adjusters or inspectors. It changes what the ones you have spend the day on. A desk adjuster who receives a complete, guided submission closes files that would otherwise sit in a field adjuster's route for a week.

If your own team is short, book a demo and we will walk through one inspection type you could take off the road.

How far have building and regulatory inspections moved?

Public inspectors adopted remote methods under pressure in 2020, pulled back, and are now being pushed forward again by housing policy.

In April 2020, 61% of US code departments could not do electronic or remote inspections. By September 2020 that was 53%. The first survey drew more than 1,150 responses from all 50 states. (International Code Council, reported by its Vice President of Innovation via the Modular Building Institute)

In the 2021 follow-up, 59% of jurisdictions performed only in-person inspections, 39% a mix of in-person and remote, and 2% only remote. The survey had 158 code official responses, self-selected, and was funded by the US Department of Energy. (NEEP and MEEA with the International Code Council, October 2021)

Contractors in the same study said 18% of the jurisdictions they work in offer remote inspections. Only 28 contractors responded, so treat it as an indication. (NEEP and MEEA, October 2021)

The City of San Diego conducted more than 4,000 virtual inspections in 2025, about 10% to 12% of all single-family and duplex inspections. (City of San Diego Development Services Department, via SPUR, February 2026)

In Los Angeles County, remote inspections account for 20% to 40% of all eligible inspections. Adoption is highest for electrical finals, water heaters and solar tie-ins: small, visible, repeatable scopes. (SPUR, February 2026)

San Diego estimates that remote inspections save its building inspectors more than 40 hours a week, and its chief building official says inspectors working remotely complete 50% more inspections. The saving is travel between sites and idle time between appointments. (City of San Diego, via SPUR, February 2026)

US truck safety regulators ran 1,013 offsite carrier investigations in fiscal year 2019, 5,058 in 2020, 4,821 in 2021 and 1,538 in 2025. The remote share fell back after the pandemic but settled above where it started, which is the same shape as auto claims. (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration data, via FreightWaves, 25 September 2026)

By March 2020 the classification society DNV GL had conducted more than 15,000 remote ship surveys, almost 25% of all its surveys. Most were for minor conditions of class. (Self-reported by DNV GL in sponsored content, Lloyd's List, 2020)

Housing associations and landlords sit in the same position as the building departments. We covered that sector in remote property inspection.

What does a truck roll cost, and how many are avoidable?

Field service has the best cost data of any sector here, because a truck roll shows up as a line in the budget.

The average cost of a field service visit was $1,011.17 in 2011, up from around $750. It is an old figure from TSIA's field service benchmark survey, and it is still widely cited because few newer ones have a named source. (John Ragsdale, TSIA, December 2011)

20% of truck rolls are unnecessary, and one in five cases could be resolved remotely. (Vendor-reported, Aquant, 2026 Field Service Benchmark Report)

Rolling a truck to a case that could have been resolved remotely turns a 1.4% service cost impact into 18.3%. (Vendor-reported, Aquant, 2026)

Failed service visits make up 44% of total service costs for lower-performing organisations. (Vendor-reported, Aquant, 2026)

Top-performing service organisations have an avoidable dispatch rate of 3%, the bottom performers 24%. The 2025 edition analysed data from 157 service organisations and put the average at 14% of truck rolls. The 2026 edition's 20% suggests the problem grew. (Vendor-reported, Aquant, 2025 Field Service Benchmark Report)

Top performers fix 87% of jobs on the first visit, the bottom 20% of organisations 59%. (Vendor-reported, Aquant, 2025)

When a job is not solved on the first visit, the cost of resolving it is on average 34% higher than the cost per work order. A low first-time fix rate is often an inspection problem: the technician arrived without knowing what they would find. (Vendor-reported, Aquant, 2025)

Two of our longer pieces work these numbers through: what an unnecessary field service visit costs and how to reduce truck rolls. For the capture side, see Venta Capture for field service.

Do customers want to do the inspection themselves?

Yes, with conditions. They want guidance, and they want a person within reach.

Nearly 80% of US homeowners would use their smartphone to document property damage for a claim, and 62.5% are somewhat or very likely to try a smartphone inspection if their insurer offered one. Online survey of more than 1,120 insured homeowners in July 2025. Among people aged 60 and over the share willing to photograph damage themselves was above 80%. (Vendor-reported, Xceedance, via Claims Journal)

61.9% of those homeowners worry that a mistake, such as a missing or mislabelled photo, could affect their cover or claim, and 46% are unsure what or how much to document. (Vendor-reported, Xceedance, via Claims Journal)

63.7% would welcome clear step-by-step guidance and 48.3% want access to help from a person. Their reasons for wanting self-inspection at all: doing it on their own schedule, not having to book an inspector, and not letting someone into the home. (Vendor-reported, Xceedance, via Claims Journal)

71% of homeowner respondents were aware of consumer-led mobile inspections and favour them over a traditional in-person inspection visit. 69% see a carrier that offers them as innovative and 62% as customer-focused. This is about underwriting inspections, not claims. (Vendor-reported, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, September 2024)

94% of auto claimants who submitted photos or documents themselves were satisfied with doing so. 334 of 1,000 respondents with a recent claim had used that option, and every generation scored above 90%. (Vendor-reported, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, 2021 Future of Claims study, via Repairer Driven News)

22% of US consumers have avoided filing an insurance claim because the digital process was too frustrating or complicated. Online survey of more than 1,000 adults, April 2025. (Vendor-reported, Insurity, 2025 Digital Experience Index)

Only 15% of consumers want a fully self-service, digital-only experience from their insurer. 48% prefer digital first with the option to speak to someone. (Vendor-reported, Insurity, May 2025)

Put the Xceedance and J.D. Power findings side by side and the requirement is specific. People will do the capture. They are afraid of doing it wrong. And they punish the insurer when their photos turn out not to be enough.

What this means for claims, property and service leaders

The remote share is set by the quality of what comes back. Auto claims reached 60% virtual handling because a photo of a dented door is usually enough to estimate from. Property sits near 11% fully digital because a photo of a ceiling stain usually is not. The difference is whether the person holding the phone was told what to capture: every room, the source of the water, the meter, the serial plate. That is a question of workflow design more than of technology.

The second point is capacity. With 21,600 adjuster openings a year, 20% attrition and a code official workforce that planned its own retirement for this decade, the choice is no longer between a visit and a remote inspection on quality alone. For a growing share of files it is between a remote inspection this week and a visit some time next month.

Third, a remote inspection is only worth its saving if the evidence holds up afterwards. A photo that arrives by email has no recorded origin. That is why we built Venta Capture around the session and not the upload. The recipient opens a single-use link, with no app and no account, and follows a guided workflow step by step, with retakes where a shot is unusable. Photos and video are recorded in the session, on that device, and sealed on receipt: a fingerprint per file, a signed seal, a timestamp from an independent timestamping authority and a printable proof of seal. More than 25 control points per submission are recorded for the reviewer. The product records and measures. A person decides.

It does not fit everything. Structural damage, anything that needs instruments, and complex or disputed losses still need someone on site, and the 47-point J.D. Power penalty is what happens when you pretend otherwise. Use remote capture to sort: settle the simple file from the desk, and send the visit out already knowing what it will find. There is more on that in remote claim inspection, in the remote inspection software overview, and on the product pages for claims, property and sealed evidence.

Start for free and send yourself one guided inspection, or book a demo to see it on your own inspection types.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of insurance claims are inspected remotely?

For US auto claims, LexisNexis Risk Solutions reported that virtual handling settled at a little over 60% in 2021, up from under 15% before the pandemic. Property is lower: J.D. Power found that only 11% of property claimants used digital channels for every major step in its 2022 study. There is no single published figure across all lines.

How much does a field inspection cost compared with a remote inspection?

No industry body publishes a standard cost per claims field inspection. The closest sourced figures are effects: carriers in the LexisNexis 2019 study reported a 50% reduction in processing cost and 1 to 15 days off the cycle time. In field service, TSIA put the average visit at $1,011.17 in 2011, and Aquant reports that a remotely solvable case costs 1.4% of service cost when handled remotely against 18.3% when a truck is sent.

Is there a shortage of claims adjusters?

The occupation is shrinking and churning at once. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 6% decline in adjuster, appraiser, examiner and investigator jobs from 2025 to 2035, and still expects about 21,600 openings a year to replace leavers. Deloitte reports average attrition of 20% among claims professionals at the insurers it spoke to.

How many truck rolls are unnecessary?

Aquant's 2026 Field Service Benchmark Report puts it at 20%, up from 14% in the 2025 edition. The spread matters more than the average: top performers had an avoidable dispatch rate of 3% in the 2025 data and bottom performers 24%.

Do customers prefer self-service inspections?

Most are willing. Nearly 80% of US homeowners told Xceedance in 2025 they would document damage with their smartphone, and 94% of auto claimants who submitted their own photos were satisfied in the LexisNexis 2021 study. The conditions are guidance and a human fallback: 61.9% fear making a mistake, and Insurity found only 15% of consumers want a digital-only experience.

Are remote building inspections accepted by code officials?

Increasingly, for defined scopes. In the 2021 NEEP and MEEA survey, 39% of jurisdictions used a mix of remote and in-person inspections. In 2025 San Diego did more than 4,000 virtual inspections and Los Angeles County handles 20% to 40% of eligible inspections remotely, mostly water heaters, electrical finals and solar. Florida has authorised virtual building inspections by statute since 2021.

When is a remote inspection the wrong choice?

When the decision needs something a camera cannot give: measurements with instruments, structural assessment, hidden damage, or a contested loss where the inspector's presence is part of the process. J.D. Power's data shows satisfaction falls 47 points when customers submit photos and an in-person inspection follows anyway, so decide the route before asking for the photos.

Methodology and sources

We opened every source on 30 September 2026 and used only figures we read on the linked page. Where a study sits behind a sign-up or a paywall, we link the trade publication that reproduces the figures and name the original publisher. Figures from companies that sell software, data or services in the sector are labelled vendor-reported with the company's name. Several older figures are kept because nothing newer with a named source exists: the 2011 TSIA visit cost, the 2014 code official survey and the 2021 building department survey. We dropped every figure we could not open, and figures that our claims and fraud statistics pages already cover. There are no Venta Capture figures on this page.