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The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.

Andrew Tobias

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Andrew Tobias
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: April 20
Journalist
Writer
Challenged
Company
Insurance
May
Assumption
Work
Efforts
Believe
Companies
Good
Filled
Never
Industry
Assumptions
Life
Underlying
People
Effort

More quotes by Andrew Tobias

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Life insurance in America has traditionally been dominated by mutual insurers. Twelve of the fifteen largest life insurers are mutuals.
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There's no question young drivers have far more accidents than older ones - but is it our aim to keep them off the roads? Or to allow only rich young people (who can afford the premiums) to drive?
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Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.
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Now listen. You can't fool all the people all the time-- but I want you to try.
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There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.
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The life insurance policies advertised on the radio with the line You cannot be turned down for this coverage! are actually saying, For policies this small, it would cost us more to decide whom to turn down than simply to accept everybody - and make them pay through the nose.
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The larger the deductible you choose, the less insurance you are buying. Insurers want to sell insurance.
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The best thing I have are 5 percent bonds from 1780, denominated from $1 to $20. As far as I can tell, they are obligations from the United States of America, so I should be able to walk down to the Federal Reserve and redeem the uncanceled ones. With 217 years of accrued interest, for a $20 bond, that's about $800,000.
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Life insurance is a commodity.
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You want 21 percent risk free? Pay off your credit cards.
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No wonder lawyers, who control the legal system, have fought so hard, and with great success, against no fault insurance. No fault, no lawsuits. No lawsuits, no lunch.
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In short: Readily available low-cost life insurance would be a threat to the industry, and whatever threatens the life insurance industry threatens America.
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The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.
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It's very nice to be able to be who you are.
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Summers are the best. And I figured summer was my best time for meeting someone, too, because in the summer people are looking for someone to snuggle up with for the winter. And because in the summer I could take off my shirt.
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There are only two things as complicated as insurance accounting and I have no idea what they are.
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But successful investors tend to be not too self-destructive. They tend to be patient, they tend not to follow the crowd, and they tend not to be too guilty about winning.
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The industry cannot long offer unneeded or overpriced insurance if people will not buy it.
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I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.
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There's no such thing as altruism.
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