Insurance joke hits close to home

This is a funny video on the typical interaction between an insurance underwriter and agent, only slightly exaggerated.

Unfortunately due to the every increasing greed of insurance companies they are combining these jobs into one, the sales/production underwriter. They not only get two jobs in one, thereby increasing the work load on labor (euphemistically called “productivity”) and reducing expenses. That the laborer is overworked and dies of stress is irrelevant, since they are expendable and replaceable by newer workers for lower wages. The job then becomes the sale to meet production goals set by greed instead of doing the kind of underwriting necessary for long-term stability. A prime example was the financial crises, where housing underwriting standards were non-existent to create an artificial bubble that they knew would crash, and in fact bet on it to their own criminal gain at the expense of society. Insurance is supposed to be one of those societal goods to protect the insured, and the public, from catastrophic loss. But with the focus on short-term gain for the company only, and little regard for either the insured on the public, this is what we now get. A conversation like the above within the production underwriter, with the sales side winning if s/he wants to keep their job.

Here's another video on the need for more new business at all costs. Here the agent is the responsible one, asking legitimate questions while the company just wants more new business to overcompensate for irresponsible underwriting practices in the hopes claims don't catch up to premiums. But it always does, eventually, especially when agents start noticing things like in the video and go elsewhere, production goes down, claims catch up, company goes under, and bye bye to the insureds with society footing the bill to cover the now uninsured.