3 Quick Responses to Insurance Career Objections

I was looking at several resources on the Insurance Information Institute’s website (www.iii.org) and I might not have even stopped to read the survey, but the last bullet statement caught my eye. “Less than half of Americans would like to see someone close to them choose the insurance field for their career.” As a self-proclaimed insurance geek, I almost had a physical reaction to that. OK. To be fair, I didn’t actually choose to get into insurance, it was the available job when I was looking for work, but that was a long time ago now.

What’s worse is that according to this survey, 48% would not like to see someone close to them choose the insurance field for their career. So, less than half of us want our family in insurance and almost half of us don’t want our family in insurance. I’m almost half way insulted now. You get the difference, right? Almost half of Americans actively are against the idea of someone they love having an insurance career.

Let me address the top three reasons that people say they would not want someone close to them in insurance.

“Insurance is not an interesting field in which to work.” OK. I get it. People think of insurance and they think that we’re all like Ned Ryerson (a la Groundhog Day). Worse yet, they get the image of Mr. Incredible sitting in his insurance company office dying inside. Here’s the reality. We intersect life at people’s crisis points. I’ve had the honor to serve emergency service personnel from coast to coast. I’ve been able to help our heroes when they’ve had to deal with personal tragedy. We come along side of people when their life long homes are nothing but ruin and we help them to try and make life normal again.

“Insurance professionals are not well-paid.” Well that’s just vague and I’d rather not deal with it, but in the interests of accuracy I will. (Here’s the insurance geek coming out. Sorry.) Not well-paid is not a well-defined term. What does that mean exactly? Who is setting the standard of well-paid? I’ve met some folks who work catastrophe claims that can make six figures in one cat season (that’s over $100,000 in a few months, which fits my definition of well-paid). I’ve known several agents who make a fantastic living. There’s money in insurance. There is opportunity if you want it. This field is wide open.

Let me take the next two together and treat them like one. “You do not have a good opinion of the insurance professionals you know.” “Insurance professionals are not respected.” You kind of got me there. I don’t know exactly what to say. I know a lot of insurance professionals and I don’t like all of them, either. On the other hand, I know a lot of people in a lot of different fields and there are crooks and slime balls in a lot of different careers. I guess all I’m saying is that there are bad people all over, but there are great people, too. In a prior job, the company I worked for hosted quarterly blood drives and gave people time off to volunteer in the community. Insurance people do a lot of good for people. A good friend of mine drove from North Florida and spent months away from his family helping other people in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew destroyed communities.

This survey caught my attention because it’s the second annual Insurance Careers Month and I want to say without wavering that the insurance field has been good to me and my house. In a few years, I have been blessed with opportunity to work with fantastic people who all work together to make a difference in the world. If you’re looking for work that’s meaningful, I recommend it highly.

Topics Talent