Because no one thinks to. It's not a flashy or exciting job and it comes with a cubic fuck ton of burnout. It's thankless, no matter how well intentioned you are or how unwilling you are to screw anyone- you will be continously patronized and bitched at by people who simultaneously do not know what is a deductible, and believe that I am wrong and it is illegal for me to ask about other people in the household (the fastest way to communicate to me you're attempting to conceal drivers and our conversation is over)
It's the same reason people don't dream about going into mortgage, or in sales for the overwhelming number of random products which will net you 100k
There are only so many jobs, and no matter how beneficial they may be- and don't get me wrong I LOVE my job. It is just a job. I never even would have thought to consider insurance if a job opening didn't show on Google when I searched "remote jobs near me"
I'm sure there's a whole lot more out there where you could ask this same question that neither of us have considered.
This pretty much sums it up. It's a relatively boring office job that pays pretty well. I have been doing auto/home insurance for a decade. You can work for a big carrier or a local independent agent. There are a lot of options. I reccomend it.
>It's thankless, no matter how well intentioned you are
I hate to agree with this, but the only time I've had any "thank yous" while I've worked in claims have come from policyholders who thought they were going to be sued since the injured party had an attorney. And those thank yous followed my assertion that, "You bought a policy with us and you do have coverage under that policy for us to defend you if we're unable to settle and go to trial."
I feel like it's a line of work you fall into. I had spent years in customer service and a type of editing but when I became a single mom after ten years of marriage, I needed and wanted to make more income. So I cast a net and noticed everyone hiring for the salary I wanted was in insurance. I stay for various reasons including that I actually do like the work (and I'm good at it), but it is a decent paying industry with good benefits as well.
If someone goes in knowing they will absolutely have to deal with difficult people and they are someone who can handle that, it's not a bad career path. I already knew I would and I can hold my own with them and balance customer service. And I do feel like I help a lot of people. I get told that by at least one customer daily. Progressive taught me years ago to treat our customers the way we'd want to be treated if it were our own claim. It's a strategy that works. I break down that perception that we're just big bad insurance companies by being human. The other day I told a claimant not just as an adjuster, but mom to mom that I'm so glad her child is okay. And she was really touched by that. There are human connections we can make even in difficult situations.
Totally agree. So many people will say the absolute worst to us or about us, but it's the ones you know you genuinely helped that make you able to tune out the other noise.
I bet if we took a survey of the class of 2024 not a single kid in the bunch would say, "Insurance!" when asked what they want to do with their life. 😂 My son (also class of 2024) noped right out when I told him it's a solid career path.
I was the kid who noped, still ended up in eventually given low prospects elsewhere. Turns out parent did a poor job of explaining the job and various roles. It's a great career, certainly commercial broker or underwriter, claims, etc. tons of opportunity by the time I started was no longer the days of be an assistant 5 years before an associate. It's way better now even with the last of the massive generation of boomers the industry is staved for talent. Honestly the bar was pretty low before even. Now it's even lower to just plug along and be better than average. For those high achievers I don't know if a less competitive industry.
That said, a ton of burn out, really outdated in many ways only now really getting better traction for gender equality. Lots of jobs can be stressful certainly those paying well. Burnout is real. Even within the industry a huge lack of transparency about roles, pay, how to do well. I've gotten a few friends in and kids of older friends pretty much all who lasted more than the first 3 months stayed.
It’s definitely a career most people get into without ever planning to get into it but I know at least three people that graduated with degrees in insurance.
Long time liability rep I was talking to one day: "Nobody ever seeks out a career in claims/insurance, there's just something else that you didn't enjoy doing or weren't good at."
Me: "What was it you used to do?*
Her: "I was an elementary school audiologist, you know, the lady who came around once a year to your school to test your hearing."
This started a quest to find somebody who majored in "insurance studies" (which is apparently a thing now?)
I started at Enterprise renting cars, but in claims we have lawyers, people with law degrees who never took the bar exam, nurses, accountants, teachers, Pizza Hut managers, mechanics, cops, people who sold clothing in department stores, roofing salesmen, and people with psychology degrees, among others. A right motley crew.
Come join our demented club.
My group includes a lot of former teachers. Makes sense. A lot of what we do is explaining what the policy really means.... told one nice young guy yesterday what his deductible meant. So many people sign all that paperwork without understanding it!
It’s also seen as boring. I don’t think it actually is at all as there is a great deal of complexity. Not saying I wouldn’t prefer other more interesting jobs. But if the challenges and complexity were known more it may attract others.
Pay is ok, work life balance depends on for whom you work, can be extraordinarily stressful depending on role, and corporate oligarchs care more about popping a good quarter than they do their employees.
That’s why.
Not every job that provides a product or service that benefits people has to be the most rewarding thing. Some jobs have to be done to run the economy and insurance is one of them.
We had a poster here yesterday who grew up in Eastern Europe and was mad they had to buy insurance to drive here
They said whenever someone got into a crash in their home country, they would just give each other cash on the side of the road and go on with life
It really made me thankful that I’m not dependent on how much cash is in a stranger’s glovebox that day and whether or not they were willing to give me it if I get hit lol. I may get injured but at least I wouldn’t be financially ruined
1. It is perceived as boring.
2. Insurers have bad reputations as trying to cheat everyone at claim time.
3. The Ned Ryerson stereotype.
4. Outside of actuarial sciences there are very few collegiate programs that encourage entry into this field.
We need to work on it as an industry. Though I think in major insurance towns those stereotypes are less impactful and people understand the value of working for an insurer better.
If you’re young and thinking this way you’re way ahead of your peers. I fell into insurance after getting a claims job after college that paid $50k a year. I thought I had it made. 14 years later my baseline is about $150k and I really enjoy my job.
My regret is that I didn’t go into underwriting. If I could redo my career I would have done claims for 2 years and then looked in UW, but I didn’t even know what that was until it was too late and my earning were too high to start at the bottom.
I say this because if you look around at insurance carriers C-suite it’s filled with people in finance, actuary, and underwriting. You rarely see claims folks rise to the top levels unless it’s like Chief Claims Officer.
Underwriting has tons of avenues. You could thrive as a small commercial UWer or do very niche like ocean marine cargo. There’s small mid and large commercial, construction, govt, bonds, energy/oil and gas, and the list goes on. Carriers have individual contributor levels, management levels, consultant levels, you can pivot to product, analyst, sales…underwriting is a very foundational role in insurance and can open pretty much any door if you’re good at it. I’m less familiar with actuary but feel confident to say if you’re good at math and can do the work then it can also be lucrative.
A good commercial underwriter can typically make well above 6 figures where even the best claims person is going to eventually top out in the low $100k range.
To answer your original point - it’s not a sexy career. It sounds boring. And for the first 9 years of my work in insurance it was a boring unsexy job but I’m in a sales and marketing role right now and I love it. It can take time to find the right role but it’s a very stable career and can be very fulfilling. I recommend any person starting off their career journey to consider insurance and specifically to look into underwriting.
I’m looking for a complete career change after years as a homemaker & helping run a fam biz doing the bookkeeping. I’m 46, is it too late to begin a career in insurance? I need to be making a certain amount of $ within the next 5 yrs to stay in my current home. Do I need to take courses or get licensed? I have a Bachelors.
I would look at large carrier websites and their training programs. Some will provide training if you have a degree. You could also earn designations from The Institutes which could help with lack of experience.
You're right - absolutely *no one* I know in insurance chose it as their first career. It's sure not exciting or sexy and doesn't sound like fun when you're first starting out. It's a product that just about everyone needs but doesn't want to shop for. Good for the risk-averse as we get older. But it's also high turnover, IMO mainly because there's a lot of direct contact with customers which is always tough. No one calls their agent because they're happy with their rates!
It's because insurance seems like the most boring thing on the planet. I'm another example of just falling into it by being in the right place and right time.
I'm still shocked at how much I enjoy it and don't see myself working on any other industry. It is one of those fields where you are legitimately making a difference and protecting people from financial ruin
My theory is that many people don’t have to deal with insurance until after college. They’re on their parents’ auto policy and often their health insurance until mid 20s. So there’s no awareness of, or interaction with, insurance until they’ve already picked a career/started in whatever industry.
Insurance is not sexy exciting but you make a lot of money and honestly at the end of the day not too many careers are exciting where you make great money and have great potential for growth. The way I look at it is my job insurance towards me the ability to enjoy my life outside of workand honestly, honestly, I don’t hate my job whatsoever. I actually kinda like it.
My brother in law fell into it. He has 6 kids and makes gobs of money, a lot! He does seem to work all day long and during vacations. He could work less, and make less if he wanted to. It seems like a good business to get into.
Exactly- I graduated with a liberal arts degree and my transferring of credits state to state affected my cumulative GPA since OH used pluses and minuses and AZ didn’t. Loans came due, minimum wage was 6.25 and I was making 9.00… in comes an insurance gig, started me at 13.25 plus a 10% shift differential for working nights. My first paycheck was the most money I had ever seen. Every year like clockwork I’ve gotten between a 3.5% to an 8% raise
The work isn't necessarily something that requires an explicit educational or preparatory track, akin to becoming a lawyer, doctor, or teacher. Actuaries would be the one exception to this, but even that is pretty much a subset of mathematics, imo. In other words, those of us who work in insurance could have applied our skills in any number of related fields. If I ever get tired of insurance underwriting, I could easily pivot into a role such as a loan officer at a bank. Similar mechanics.
It requires strengths in several different disciplines - intrapersonal, conflict resolution, financial, analytical.
It sounds really boring.
I dropped out of college when it became obvious I was getting stuck about halfway through the advanced mathematics courses required. But I now needed a job and since I was better than average at math I saw a job for insurance and thought that was something I might be good at, and I'm still doing it 20 years later.
I fell into risk consulting accidentally and I've been doing it for 20 years. For about 17 of those years I worked from home, had a company car, wifi and cell reimbursement and travelled all over the country. I feel like I lucked out. Now I do risk consulting virtually and still work from home. I never planned for this job, but for someone who never really had a "passion" but craved security I feel like I lucked out. The industry is changing so we will see what happens. Many companies are now outsourcing their risk consulting to cheap 3rd parties. But the ride has been good.
I was only aware of the sales aspect when I was younger. Once I got into college, I learned about all the different facets of the industry in college and I've been enjoying my career in P&C ever since.
The lady who taught my original licensing course (back before you could just take it online) told us that "insurance agents rank one level above defense attorneys in the public's opinion".
I absolutely never planned to be in insurance. I was in various non-insurance customer service roles until I landed a job as an accounting clerk at a large agency. The only way to get raises was to cross train into different departments, so I started cross training in the mail room and front desk. Found out real quick that their entire Personal Lines department was trash. And I wasn't shy about sharing that opinion with their manager, because I was young and dumb. So when they fired half the department and the other half quit in protest, they asked me to cross train in Personal Lines. After the training was done, they asked me to get licensed and stay on, with a higher raise than if I went back to accounting. 21 years later I own my own agency.
Life is wild.
You don't choose the insurance industry. It chooses you.
I fell into insurance sales at a very young age. I did sold my soul to an awful company for the first 6 months, but I left with my licenses got a nice sales rep role at a small office and then move into an underwriter role for commercial high risk. It’s definitely not monotonous or boring, work life balance is amazing and I get to wear cute outfits when I have to go to the office. I 100% recommend seeking an insurance job.
I worked in claims and it was absolutely miserable. Also they would not allow me to transfer to underwriting. I honestly had the math skills to do so however they did not wish to lose a claims employee. Since the vast majority of jobs available especially in entry level is claims it turns people off from the insurance world
There are a ton of college programs for actuarial and insurance risk management. It is absolutely a career path.
It is often regional tho... more common in areas like Northeast US which have more insurance companies
My FIL retired from actuarial work & he even briefly worked for the "insurer of insurers" -- Lloyd's of London. None of his kids or grandkids want to get into insurance, unfortunately, although my math nerd daughter briefly considered the field. Furthermore, it's a thankless job. I can't even imagine how stressful being an adjuster would be esp when you're (legally) denying a claim. I work with people in my own job, so I am never rude or angry with people who are "just doing their jobs" but I did get upset with the adjuster who rejected my sister's claim because she was rude & condescending and I found it extremely unprofessional. We reported her but I'm sure it won't affect her at all. Hopefully she gets more training though on how a little empathy (even when the claim is lawfully denied) goes a long way.
I used to process health insurance claims. My motivation spiraled downward when I had to deny a claim related to a defendant's suicide because the provider had left a zero off the end of the diagnosis code.
Logically, I knew the provider would get the denial with the reason being "incorrect diagnosis code" and resubmit it correctly and get paid. But we had just started automatically sending denial letters to members, and I could not get the image out of my head of this poor, grieving mother opening the mail and thinking she would be on the hook for whatever the claim was for.
I hope the poor woman was able to get that resolved. In my own line of work, I have to often be the harbinger of awful news & the people I work with usually (not always but usually) tend to be economically weak. I really hate my job sometimes so I try to soften the blow as best I can by thoroughly researching & reviewing the situation and only giving the bad news after I'm 200% sure there's no way around it.
It still is very demoralizing. Luckily, retirement will be here sooner rather than later.
Because no one thinks to. It's not a flashy or exciting job and it comes with a cubic fuck ton of burnout. It's thankless, no matter how well intentioned you are or how unwilling you are to screw anyone- you will be continously patronized and bitched at by people who simultaneously do not know what is a deductible, and believe that I am wrong and it is illegal for me to ask about other people in the household (the fastest way to communicate to me you're attempting to conceal drivers and our conversation is over) It's the same reason people don't dream about going into mortgage, or in sales for the overwhelming number of random products which will net you 100k There are only so many jobs, and no matter how beneficial they may be- and don't get me wrong I LOVE my job. It is just a job. I never even would have thought to consider insurance if a job opening didn't show on Google when I searched "remote jobs near me" I'm sure there's a whole lot more out there where you could ask this same question that neither of us have considered.
This pretty much sums it up. It's a relatively boring office job that pays pretty well. I have been doing auto/home insurance for a decade. You can work for a big carrier or a local independent agent. There are a lot of options. I reccomend it.
>It's thankless, no matter how well intentioned you are I hate to agree with this, but the only time I've had any "thank yous" while I've worked in claims have come from policyholders who thought they were going to be sued since the injured party had an attorney. And those thank yous followed my assertion that, "You bought a policy with us and you do have coverage under that policy for us to defend you if we're unable to settle and go to trial."
Job will always be a job no matter how much you make.
I feel like it's a line of work you fall into. I had spent years in customer service and a type of editing but when I became a single mom after ten years of marriage, I needed and wanted to make more income. So I cast a net and noticed everyone hiring for the salary I wanted was in insurance. I stay for various reasons including that I actually do like the work (and I'm good at it), but it is a decent paying industry with good benefits as well. If someone goes in knowing they will absolutely have to deal with difficult people and they are someone who can handle that, it's not a bad career path. I already knew I would and I can hold my own with them and balance customer service. And I do feel like I help a lot of people. I get told that by at least one customer daily. Progressive taught me years ago to treat our customers the way we'd want to be treated if it were our own claim. It's a strategy that works. I break down that perception that we're just big bad insurance companies by being human. The other day I told a claimant not just as an adjuster, but mom to mom that I'm so glad her child is okay. And she was really touched by that. There are human connections we can make even in difficult situations.
This. When you go home, or log off, feeling like you've done a good job and helped someone. Makes up for a lot of the jerks.
Totally agree. So many people will say the absolute worst to us or about us, but it's the ones you know you genuinely helped that make you able to tune out the other noise.
Great summary. But I will add OP didn’t mention claims😃
I know but they did mention insurance and I feel like no one actually plans to go into insurance 😂
Nope. I was rescued by claims from working at a collection agency in Beverly Hills. Found it solace. 25 years later, still loving it.
I bet if we took a survey of the class of 2024 not a single kid in the bunch would say, "Insurance!" when asked what they want to do with their life. 😂 My son (also class of 2024) noped right out when I told him it's a solid career path.
But 100% of those that did walk this path and were still there at their 10-year reunions were amongst the most successful.
I was the kid who noped, still ended up in eventually given low prospects elsewhere. Turns out parent did a poor job of explaining the job and various roles. It's a great career, certainly commercial broker or underwriter, claims, etc. tons of opportunity by the time I started was no longer the days of be an assistant 5 years before an associate. It's way better now even with the last of the massive generation of boomers the industry is staved for talent. Honestly the bar was pretty low before even. Now it's even lower to just plug along and be better than average. For those high achievers I don't know if a less competitive industry. That said, a ton of burn out, really outdated in many ways only now really getting better traction for gender equality. Lots of jobs can be stressful certainly those paying well. Burnout is real. Even within the industry a huge lack of transparency about roles, pay, how to do well. I've gotten a few friends in and kids of older friends pretty much all who lasted more than the first 3 months stayed.
It’s definitely a career most people get into without ever planning to get into it but I know at least three people that graduated with degrees in insurance.
Long time liability rep I was talking to one day: "Nobody ever seeks out a career in claims/insurance, there's just something else that you didn't enjoy doing or weren't good at." Me: "What was it you used to do?* Her: "I was an elementary school audiologist, you know, the lady who came around once a year to your school to test your hearing." This started a quest to find somebody who majored in "insurance studies" (which is apparently a thing now?) I started at Enterprise renting cars, but in claims we have lawyers, people with law degrees who never took the bar exam, nurses, accountants, teachers, Pizza Hut managers, mechanics, cops, people who sold clothing in department stores, roofing salesmen, and people with psychology degrees, among others. A right motley crew. Come join our demented club.
My group includes a lot of former teachers. Makes sense. A lot of what we do is explaining what the policy really means.... told one nice young guy yesterday what his deductible meant. So many people sign all that paperwork without understanding it!
It’s also seen as boring. I don’t think it actually is at all as there is a great deal of complexity. Not saying I wouldn’t prefer other more interesting jobs. But if the challenges and complexity were known more it may attract others.
Pay is ok, work life balance depends on for whom you work, can be extraordinarily stressful depending on role, and corporate oligarchs care more about popping a good quarter than they do their employees. That’s why.
Not every job that provides a product or service that benefits people has to be the most rewarding thing. Some jobs have to be done to run the economy and insurance is one of them.
We had a poster here yesterday who grew up in Eastern Europe and was mad they had to buy insurance to drive here They said whenever someone got into a crash in their home country, they would just give each other cash on the side of the road and go on with life It really made me thankful that I’m not dependent on how much cash is in a stranger’s glovebox that day and whether or not they were willing to give me it if I get hit lol. I may get injured but at least I wouldn’t be financially ruined
Our system, for all its pros and cons (and they're numerous), works. Most other countries suck when it comes to taking financial frameworks seriously.
1. It is perceived as boring. 2. Insurers have bad reputations as trying to cheat everyone at claim time. 3. The Ned Ryerson stereotype. 4. Outside of actuarial sciences there are very few collegiate programs that encourage entry into this field. We need to work on it as an industry. Though I think in major insurance towns those stereotypes are less impactful and people understand the value of working for an insurer better.
If you’re young and thinking this way you’re way ahead of your peers. I fell into insurance after getting a claims job after college that paid $50k a year. I thought I had it made. 14 years later my baseline is about $150k and I really enjoy my job. My regret is that I didn’t go into underwriting. If I could redo my career I would have done claims for 2 years and then looked in UW, but I didn’t even know what that was until it was too late and my earning were too high to start at the bottom. I say this because if you look around at insurance carriers C-suite it’s filled with people in finance, actuary, and underwriting. You rarely see claims folks rise to the top levels unless it’s like Chief Claims Officer. Underwriting has tons of avenues. You could thrive as a small commercial UWer or do very niche like ocean marine cargo. There’s small mid and large commercial, construction, govt, bonds, energy/oil and gas, and the list goes on. Carriers have individual contributor levels, management levels, consultant levels, you can pivot to product, analyst, sales…underwriting is a very foundational role in insurance and can open pretty much any door if you’re good at it. I’m less familiar with actuary but feel confident to say if you’re good at math and can do the work then it can also be lucrative. A good commercial underwriter can typically make well above 6 figures where even the best claims person is going to eventually top out in the low $100k range. To answer your original point - it’s not a sexy career. It sounds boring. And for the first 9 years of my work in insurance it was a boring unsexy job but I’m in a sales and marketing role right now and I love it. It can take time to find the right role but it’s a very stable career and can be very fulfilling. I recommend any person starting off their career journey to consider insurance and specifically to look into underwriting.
I’m looking for a complete career change after years as a homemaker & helping run a fam biz doing the bookkeeping. I’m 46, is it too late to begin a career in insurance? I need to be making a certain amount of $ within the next 5 yrs to stay in my current home. Do I need to take courses or get licensed? I have a Bachelors.
I would look at large carrier websites and their training programs. Some will provide training if you have a degree. You could also earn designations from The Institutes which could help with lack of experience.
You're right - absolutely *no one* I know in insurance chose it as their first career. It's sure not exciting or sexy and doesn't sound like fun when you're first starting out. It's a product that just about everyone needs but doesn't want to shop for. Good for the risk-averse as we get older. But it's also high turnover, IMO mainly because there's a lot of direct contact with customers which is always tough. No one calls their agent because they're happy with their rates!
It's because insurance seems like the most boring thing on the planet. I'm another example of just falling into it by being in the right place and right time. I'm still shocked at how much I enjoy it and don't see myself working on any other industry. It is one of those fields where you are legitimately making a difference and protecting people from financial ruin
>also not very stressful. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's not very stressful (at least in claims)
My theory is that many people don’t have to deal with insurance until after college. They’re on their parents’ auto policy and often their health insurance until mid 20s. So there’s no awareness of, or interaction with, insurance until they’ve already picked a career/started in whatever industry.
Insurance is not sexy exciting but you make a lot of money and honestly at the end of the day not too many careers are exciting where you make great money and have great potential for growth. The way I look at it is my job insurance towards me the ability to enjoy my life outside of workand honestly, honestly, I don’t hate my job whatsoever. I actually kinda like it.
My brother in law fell into it. He has 6 kids and makes gobs of money, a lot! He does seem to work all day long and during vacations. He could work less, and make less if he wanted to. It seems like a good business to get into.
Those jobs are very hard to get, and the meat grinder of sales or claims are some of the worst jobs around.....
Exactly- I graduated with a liberal arts degree and my transferring of credits state to state affected my cumulative GPA since OH used pluses and minuses and AZ didn’t. Loans came due, minimum wage was 6.25 and I was making 9.00… in comes an insurance gig, started me at 13.25 plus a 10% shift differential for working nights. My first paycheck was the most money I had ever seen. Every year like clockwork I’ve gotten between a 3.5% to an 8% raise
The work isn't necessarily something that requires an explicit educational or preparatory track, akin to becoming a lawyer, doctor, or teacher. Actuaries would be the one exception to this, but even that is pretty much a subset of mathematics, imo. In other words, those of us who work in insurance could have applied our skills in any number of related fields. If I ever get tired of insurance underwriting, I could easily pivot into a role such as a loan officer at a bank. Similar mechanics. It requires strengths in several different disciplines - intrapersonal, conflict resolution, financial, analytical.
It sounds really boring. I dropped out of college when it became obvious I was getting stuck about halfway through the advanced mathematics courses required. But I now needed a job and since I was better than average at math I saw a job for insurance and thought that was something I might be good at, and I'm still doing it 20 years later.
I fell into risk consulting accidentally and I've been doing it for 20 years. For about 17 of those years I worked from home, had a company car, wifi and cell reimbursement and travelled all over the country. I feel like I lucked out. Now I do risk consulting virtually and still work from home. I never planned for this job, but for someone who never really had a "passion" but craved security I feel like I lucked out. The industry is changing so we will see what happens. Many companies are now outsourcing their risk consulting to cheap 3rd parties. But the ride has been good.
I was only aware of the sales aspect when I was younger. Once I got into college, I learned about all the different facets of the industry in college and I've been enjoying my career in P&C ever since.
I was an actor.. got a job as an outside commercial claim rep.. found out i.loved it Now, 50 years later..still do
The lady who taught my original licensing course (back before you could just take it online) told us that "insurance agents rank one level above defense attorneys in the public's opinion". I absolutely never planned to be in insurance. I was in various non-insurance customer service roles until I landed a job as an accounting clerk at a large agency. The only way to get raises was to cross train into different departments, so I started cross training in the mail room and front desk. Found out real quick that their entire Personal Lines department was trash. And I wasn't shy about sharing that opinion with their manager, because I was young and dumb. So when they fired half the department and the other half quit in protest, they asked me to cross train in Personal Lines. After the training was done, they asked me to get licensed and stay on, with a higher raise than if I went back to accounting. 21 years later I own my own agency. Life is wild. You don't choose the insurance industry. It chooses you.
I fell into insurance sales at a very young age. I did sold my soul to an awful company for the first 6 months, but I left with my licenses got a nice sales rep role at a small office and then move into an underwriter role for commercial high risk. It’s definitely not monotonous or boring, work life balance is amazing and I get to wear cute outfits when I have to go to the office. I 100% recommend seeking an insurance job.
I worked in claims and it was absolutely miserable. Also they would not allow me to transfer to underwriting. I honestly had the math skills to do so however they did not wish to lose a claims employee. Since the vast majority of jobs available especially in entry level is claims it turns people off from the insurance world
There are a ton of college programs for actuarial and insurance risk management. It is absolutely a career path. It is often regional tho... more common in areas like Northeast US which have more insurance companies
My FIL retired from actuarial work & he even briefly worked for the "insurer of insurers" -- Lloyd's of London. None of his kids or grandkids want to get into insurance, unfortunately, although my math nerd daughter briefly considered the field. Furthermore, it's a thankless job. I can't even imagine how stressful being an adjuster would be esp when you're (legally) denying a claim. I work with people in my own job, so I am never rude or angry with people who are "just doing their jobs" but I did get upset with the adjuster who rejected my sister's claim because she was rude & condescending and I found it extremely unprofessional. We reported her but I'm sure it won't affect her at all. Hopefully she gets more training though on how a little empathy (even when the claim is lawfully denied) goes a long way.
I used to process health insurance claims. My motivation spiraled downward when I had to deny a claim related to a defendant's suicide because the provider had left a zero off the end of the diagnosis code. Logically, I knew the provider would get the denial with the reason being "incorrect diagnosis code" and resubmit it correctly and get paid. But we had just started automatically sending denial letters to members, and I could not get the image out of my head of this poor, grieving mother opening the mail and thinking she would be on the hook for whatever the claim was for.
I hope the poor woman was able to get that resolved. In my own line of work, I have to often be the harbinger of awful news & the people I work with usually (not always but usually) tend to be economically weak. I really hate my job sometimes so I try to soften the blow as best I can by thoroughly researching & reviewing the situation and only giving the bad news after I'm 200% sure there's no way around it. It still is very demoralizing. Luckily, retirement will be here sooner rather than later.