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Educating one's self with life insurance will help strike balance between what is real from perception.
Why do some Hollywood films depict life insurance negatively?
I love watching movies and would like to ask why Hollywood movies have often depicted life insurance in a negative way, such as firms that don’t like to pay claims and agents who are too pushy? In the 1999 film Fight Club, the main character is an insurance professional who is sick and tired of his boring corporate career. Is life insurance as an industry also boring because your agents keep talking about death?
Answer
Salespeople appear to be stereotyped behaviorally as abrasive and overly aggressive. This is unfortunate because while our industry has its share of undesirable agents, there are many more who maintain high ethical standards as well as professional conduct in their sales activities. There are, in fact, Market Conduct Guidelines followed by all the life insurance companies that serve as the basis for directing sales-related behavior. It is the client who ultimately determines if his experience with a salesperson is pleasant or otherwise. We would certainly welcome such feedback.
As for your next question on restoring public faith following the crisis of confidence caused by pre-need companies that failed to fulfill their contractual obligations, we are just as anxious as you to have these matters resolved and to see justice given to the victims. While those companies you cited are not insurance companies, the market associates them nevertheless with the insurance industry. Please allow us to constantly correct this misimpression. The insurance industry is separate and distinct from the pre-need industry. Insurance has been around much longer, is well-regulated by the Insurance Commission and is governed by a law — the Insurance Code — that effectively protects the interests of the insuring public.
Your last movie reference as well as question are most interesting. Career disenchantment can happen in any profession, and there is no evidence that even remotely suggests there is a greater propensity for this to happen in the life insurance selling profession. The essence of our work is financial risk management and it is for this reason that we are duty-bound to discuss the consequences to a family’s economic well-being if there is insufficient financial preparation for the unexpected. Death is not the only reality we face. Health hazards that could lead to financially draining medical expenses or disability, rising cost of living, adequate funding for future expenses such as children’s education and estate taxes, and retirement security are also part of what we need to address in order to have peace of mind and financial stability throughout our lives.
For this reason we train our agents to present life insurance more comprehensively by pointing out how it relates to your major life stages. Hence, in our view, the life insurance sales career has a lot to offer the serious financial professional, and there is more than enough to keep our agents busy and motivated to earn a good living as well as to serve their communities in a most noble and relevant way.
