just my opinion. i was in the insurance industry for 7 yrs. not agent/ business development or sales or by anyother name called, but same function.
i was more on the "back-end". as someone mentioned earlier, there's actually a big group of us behind the scene that keeps the company running. claims, underwriters, finance, and of course the usual audit, sec, legal etc. i dared say that we form an even bigger group than the sales ppl.
i'll try to bring this topic back to building a career in the insurance industry rather than selling of insurance. insurance companies earns a living not only by selling policies to the public. incomes generated from policies or investment from shareholders are also used for other investments such as re-insurance, shares, bonds, etc. an insurance company is a company regulated by Bank Negara Malaysia, hence, it won't go bust overnight. there'll be tell tale sign.
there are also many types of general insurance, such as fire, marine, PA/H&S, engineering etc, which leads to specialisation of underwriters. underwriters are mostly deskjobs. biz development ppl will bring in a case and underwriters will determine the risk/reward for the company to undertake each case. when something bad actually happens, surveyors will be send to the scene to assess the damage. for those of u who like to run around, go out station on short notice (like tell u in the morning, by afternoon, u'll need to be in alor star or something like that), this is a part good for you. surveyors will curn out reports used by claims to assess how much to actually pay out. and finance finally will release payment.

the public's perception of insurance are usually marred by the life insurance agents who are much more agressive, maybe be cause commission / tariff is much lower? i stand corrected.

for independent agents i know who specialises in fire, marine, engineering etc they do earn a pretty decent living. the premium for ONE fire policy for say a large scale factory or a block of condominium (u know the type that our condo management buys on our behalf every year), can easily be RM1million. i'm not sure how much commission or in BNM's words "tariff", but 1% is good enough for me.

and then there is the re-insurance industry (a different kind of specialisation), and also brokers (let's not forget them).... hmm... what else? any helpers?